The Population Bomb

You know, 50 years ago or whatever, 1968, Paul Ehrlich writes the "Population Bomb", and it's just the population is just going to exponentially grow.

And I don't think we mentioned too that Christian initially said that they had been, he and his people had been working on this idea for 20 years.

And it turned out to not be correct at all.

But at the time again, people were worried about it.

If you were an environmentalist in the 1960s, your main concern wasn't climate change. It was overpopulation.

And listeners who were old enough might remember the book, The Population Bomb, the fear that the world was going to start to death because there were too many people.

There was a warning on the cover. While you are reading these words, it said, four people will have died from starvation, most of them children.

And I thought, oh, my gosh. In the edition I read, which is the first edition, said there would be massive famines in the 1970s. Basically, it said we were in deep, deep trouble.

Environmentalists were saying humankind was pushing the Earth's limits. Technologists, meanwhile, said those limits were nowhere in sight.

books like, you know, the Population Bomb and Al Gore's first book, Earth in the Balance, Limits to Growth, all these great environmental classics all stem directly from his work.

In 1968, Sarah, a Stanford University biologist named Paul Ehrlich published a book, and it was titled The Population Bomb. What was its central message?

The central warning of that book was that we were going to have massive out-of-control population growth, so much so that we were going to increase to about 24 billion people on the planet and that that was just going to be totally unsustainable.

If we do not by humane means limit our numbers, then numbers are going to be limited by more famines and shortages and consequent social conflicts.

That was the time when we actually thought that maximum world population was going to hit about 24 billion by the end of this century.

The story reveals why you see vast changes in fertility rates within a short time frame. To be sure, these changes are uneven across the planet, not just between countries, but within them. But the concerns raised in books such as The Population Bomb or in John Calhoun's terrifying experiment with mice that we wouldn't be able to feed ourselves, that famine and war were inevitable, that horror story has largely not come to pass.

Paul Ehrlich, who wrote the Population Bomb and is still kicking around, made a very famous bet with an economist Julian Simon.

He asked Simon to propose a basket of commodities and they bet on whether those would be less or more expensive by the year 2000 because that was the doomsday date as far as Dr. Ehrlich was concerned.

And he famously, Simon, who was an absolute genius as opposed to Ehrlich who certainly presumed he was one, famously collected on that bet shortly after the millennium switch because the basket of commodities became far less expensive rather than more expensive.

There was more of everything.

And of course, the entire economic history of the world since that point has indicated exactly that.

Paul Airelec for example at Stanford who wrote the population bomb in the club of Rome who were the original apocalyptic doom sayers on the environmentalist front claiming that by the year 2000 there'd be mass starvation we'd be running out of basic commodities and that life was going to get a hell of a lot worse quickly

Ehrlich set up an organization, author of the population bomb of course, called ZPG which evolved into an organization.

Ehrlich and his population bomb and the club of Rome, etc. these anti-population zealots started beating the drum back in 1965, saying that we were all going to starve to death by the year 2000 when we'll have four billion people, God help us and now have eight.

...most famously who wrote the population bomb that by the year 2000 we'd be out of all our primary resources and everyone would be starving...

how did early become famous he became famous through the 1968 book the population bomb where he's telling human beings not hey the planet is going to become more impacted and that's intrinsically bad he's saying you're all going to starve and his close colleague Sean Holdren who was Obama's chief science advisor no he probably would have been a great person.

It points out that the Population Bomb, a 1968 book by Paul Ehrlich that was probably the single most influential inspiration behind modern fears of overpopulation, was also profoundly racist.

What Ehrlich fails to mention, however, is that while Delhi's population was just shy of 3 million, both New York and Paris housed about 8 million at the time.

What Ehrlich fails to mention, however, is that while Delhi's population was just shy of 3 million, both New York and Paris housed about 8 million at the time.

Ehrlich's emphasis on an Indian city as the exemplification of overpopulation was part of a large and continuing pattern of focusing blame on the global south and mostly the non-white people who live there as affluent Western Europeans and Americans.

But a lot of people are still stuck with, you know, Paul Oleg's book, Population Bomb. It's like, ah, that was a long time ago.

if we go back to the 1968 book that we all know Population bomb that book forecasted a 20th century starvation Catastrophe but obviously that hasn't come to pass because technological advances have met increased need and worldwide people have Started to have less kids

There was a book that came out in 1970 by Paul Ehrlich, a still admired in some corners and still honored scientist, that was just completely bogus. And it was called The Population Bomb. It said that within a decade or two, there were going to be famines. It was inevitable.

And then in 1968, in the same sort of social milieu or context, Paul Ehrlich publishes the population bomb.

It is polemical.

It is an alarmist work.

It is meant to shake you when you read it.

And he says it's common famine resource wars, the end of days.

He says there's gonna be mass starvation environmental catastrophe Civilization as you dear reader know it will plummet just like the Stephen King book The Stand and interestingly enough in the

original publication of the book old doc early predicts this happening in the 1970s later predictions later editions of the book would move that up a decade to the 1980s, but this

Okay so a lot of the fear of overpopulation can be traced back to Malthusian theory but a lot of the fear in the modern era can be traced back to a single book written in 1968 by a biologist from Stanford named Paul Ehrlich he wrote a book called the population bomb very very dystopian very pessimistic because he thought that he was talking about an existential crisis.

he said India is doomed you just have to deal with that he said 65 million Americans are going to starve to death and that by his one of his more specific predictions that by the year 2000 England will not exist.

Ehrlich was obviously incorrect but because the book came out in 1968 just a few years before a lot of these policies get western support we can tell you his beliefs the things he espoused in the population bomb got super popular especially with the privileged the hires up at institutions like the World Bank and foundations like Ford and Rockefeller and so they started putting their money and their expertise where their eyes were started like taking this book is inspiration and pushing toward making real world steps that they thought were the perfect steps to eliminate the threat of overpopulation.

a lot of the fear in the modern era can be traced back to a single book written in 1968 by a biologist from Stanford named Paul Ehrlich he wrote a book called the population bomb very very dystopian very pessimistic because he thought that he was talking about an existential crisis

he said India is doomed you just have to deal with that he said 65 million Americans are going to starve to death and that by his one of his more specific predictions that by the year 2000 England will not exist

Ehrlich was obviously incorrect but because the book came out in 1968 just a few years before a lot of these policies get western support we can tell you his beliefs the things he espoused in the population bomb got super popular especially with the privileged the hires up at institutions like the World Bank and foundations like Ford and Rockefeller and so they started putting their money and their expertise where their eyes were

He says there's gonna be mass starvation environmental catastrophe Civilization as you dear reader know it will plummet just like the Stephen King book The Stand

later editions of the book would move that up a decade to the 1980s

Okay so a lot of the fear of overpopulation can be traced back to Malthusian theory but a lot of the fear in the modern era can be traced back to a single book written in 1968 by a biologist from Stanford named Paul Ehrlich he wrote a book called the population bomb very very dystopian very pessimistic because he thought that he was talking about an existential crisis.

he said India is doomed you just have to deal with that he said 65 million Americans are going to starve to death and that by his one of his more specific predictions that by the year 2000 England will not exist.

Ehrlich was obviously incorrect but because the book came out in 1968 just a few years before a lot of these policies get western support we can tell you his beliefs the things he espoused in the population bomb got super popular especially with the privileged the hires up at institutions like the World Bank and foundations like Ford and Rockefeller and so they started putting their money and their expertise where their eyes were started like taking this book is inspiration and pushing toward making real world steps that they thought were the perfect steps to eliminate the threat of overpopulation and yeah of course there is there is such thing as overpopulation it's happening but there are other methods other ways to stem the tide I think is what we're saying here.