The myth of the Population Bomb is a cautionary tale of the dangers of politicized junk science. Paul Ehrlich’s best seller in 1968 helped propel public policy in an anti-natalist, pro-abortion and pro-contraceptive direction. As I hope all of our readers know, the book was a heap of rubbish, making wild alarmist predictions about the dangers of population growth, none of which came true. Good articles on Erhlich’s bomb of a book are here and here. Rather than a population bomb, we have a population implosion throughout most of the world, including in Muslim states.
Now why would a book that was so spectacularly wrong headed have so captured the imagination of policy makers for generations? Because books like Erhlich’s truly have nothing to do with science. Science jargon is merely a wrapper for a political agenda; in Ehrlich’s case one which was both radically pro-environment and anti-human, with a heaping dollop of hatred for people who had more than two kids. I have a great deal of respect for science, and little but contempt for those who attempt to claim the mantle of science for political agendas through the use of junk science.
AI and Youtube on the black death: “The black death reduced the population.”
Millions of people are alive today because of Norman Borlaug, the “Green Revolution” agronomist who prevented Ehrlich’s dire predictions from coming true. Millions of others are not (never born) because of Paul Ehrlich.
He wasn’t a psycho. He was an ordinary academician. They resist admitting error. His resistance was stronger than most.
Borlaug’s achievements were profound, Elaine, but I doubt Ehrlich’s predictions would’ve ever come true regardless.
An unsung hero in this is German chemist Fritz Haber, who invented a process to turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia and thence nitrates shortly before WWI. The aim was to make the German Empire self-sufficient in ammo, but it also allowed for cheap nitrate fertilizers that gradually allowed a tremendous expansion in food production. Reliable estimates since the 70s suggest that natural nitrogen fixation would support no more than about 3B on this planet (which rebukes the Green Luddites and goofy Distributivists who think we’d all be happier chucking industry and “plowing with horse”). If you’re one of those in “excess” of that 3B, send a prayer once in awhile for old Fritz.
If you’re taking nominations for additional members of the Ehrlich Junk Science Club, may I suggest Rachel Carson? I wonder how many souls have died from malaria and other insect-borne diseases because of the jihad against DDT that was helped along, at least, by Silent Spring?
Frank:
Carson was for discretion, not abolition, and is on record supporting the prudent use of pesticides along with more research into other methods. She was dying of breast cancer even during her TV interview, and never lived to hear of Ehrlich, Earth Day, or the rest of the green idiocies that replaced the old conservationism of the Teddy Roosevelt era.
Recycle Ehrlich as fertilizer. He was full of it.
Can we also nominate the anti-nuclear power members of the Union of Concerned Scientists as junk scientists. Their presence at US NRC public meetings for nuclear power plants where I worked is simply too embarrassing. They are truly idiots.
The fact of Paul Erlich’s prestigious association with Stanford University should not be overlooked. That association with the Left Coast’s one-time “best and brightest”
center of learning and it’s [now-]58 Nobel laureates, numerous Turing Award winners, and 33 MacArthur Fellows gave Erich a veneer of unquestioned credibility—-a credibility which otherwise should have been long ago greatly challenged.
Ehrlich was another product of the “modern” statist establishment that produced Rolf Hochhuth. He was commissioned by the Commies to smear Pius XII and the Church with propaganda that would be broadcast and amplified by the glitterati media, and Ehrlich played the same role for the Rockefeller money lord boss establishment. Same song, different verses! Good for you, Don, in pointing this dangerous phony out.
@Tom Byrne, thank you for the information about Carson.
IIRC, there was also an element among those who loved the Bomb, along the lines of “too many of thee, but just enough of me”. Even among Thoroughly Nice People.
Ehrlich was another product of the “modern” statist establishment that produced Rolf Hochhuth.
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Thanks for the free association. We’re all learning.
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MBITRW, he was a middle class kid from Maplewood, NJ, the town in which my grandparents lived from 1926 to 1938. He was no more a product of a ‘statist establishment’ than anyone else who has a signed dissertation in his personal history (including my brother). He differed in several respects. He wrote a trade book, something very few academicians would bother with even if they thought they could interest a publisher. He had what Mr. Sailer described as a ‘radio announcer’s voice’ and that made him utile for the producers of television talk shows. It was pointed out (by Richard John Neuhaus) fifty years ago that environmentalism is often animated by a deep misanthropy; he was not unusual in that respect either. It was evident immediately that economics and human behavior were subjects of which he was not an adept and it was evident within a dozen years that he’d badly misjudged the world in which he lived. People in certain occupational segments have a heightened resistance to admitting error, prosecutors and professors among them. Fundamentally, he was another faculty a**hole. They’re everywhere on campuses.