The ecologist responsible for one of history’s most infamous false global predictions died on Friday, and the New York Times used the occasion to try to keep his anti-population prognostications alive.
In his best-selling book “The Population Bomb” from 1968, Paul Ehrlich popularized the idea that the world was heading toward massive famine and starvation. Ehrlich argued that the Earth’s natural resources were being depleted at such a rate that the population would crash worldwide.
‘His predictions proved wrong. They were not premature. They were wrong. His understanding of the world was wrong.’
Instead, the global population more than doubled from about 3.5 billion people when the book was published to 8.3 billion by 2026.
While most would call the infamous prediction a complete and utter failure, the Times said it was merely “premature.”
Many online reacted with scorn and ridicule.
“Wrong. His predictions proved wrong. They were not premature. They were wrong. His understanding of the world was wrong. Faulty. Unrealistic. False. Falsified,” data scientist John Aziz responded.
“Its [sic] stunning not just how wrong Ehrlich was … or how evil he was … but how constantly our media amplified him and is still covering for his endless failed predictions,” replied Andrew Follett of the Club for Growth.
Others pointed to stories of people who chose to avoid having children based on Ehrlich’s book and regretted it greatly later.
“Paul Ehrlich was one of the most pernicious public figures of the last 50 years. Somehow he was still celebrated in certain intellectual circles until the very end. Never forget the harm his ideas caused,” replied Alec Stapp, who cited an example from the comments section.
“I was a college student when I read Mr. Ehrlich’s ‘The Population Bomb.’ I took it to heart and now have no grandchildren, but 50 years later the population has increased to eight billion without dire consequences. I was gullible and stupid,” a man named Kenneth Emde wrote.
“Paul Ehrlich’s work wasn’t ‘premature,’ it was wrong, completely so, and evil: his recommendations resulted in many hundreds of thousands of coerced sterilizations and abortions among the world’s most vulnerable people,” city planner M. Nolan Gray replied.
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“His predictions in the 1960s and 1970s weren’t premature; they were just wrong and his Malthusian views cascaded into innumerable damage on society. … He advocated for abortion and policies for population control,” science policy analyst Chris Martz responded. “Lots of people refused to have children as a result of his philosophy. But many climate activist degrowthers still hang on every word.”
Ehrlich died of complications from cancer at the age of 93 at a nursing facility in Palo Alto, California.
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