Paul Ehrlich, noted author of The Population Bomb, died last week. Few people have been so consequentially wrong as Ehrlich. Ironically, his name, translated from the German, means “honest, truthful, sincere.” It is remarkable how this PhD in butterflies and Stanford professor rose to such prominence, capitalizing on a wave of popular pessimism to attack civilization from the left.
Ehrlich’s Population Bomb begins with an arresting line: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate . . .” Indeed, in the late 1960s, American society seemed to be coming apart. The threat of nuclear war loomed. Mass migration wore away borders. Disease spread. Ehrlich’s Population Bomb more caught the wave of alarmism than created it. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were already promoting population control across the world, especially in India and East Asia, in the early 1960s.
Paywall: https://firstthings.com/paul-ehrlich-false-prophet/
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