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Title: The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich ISBN: 1-56849-587-0 Publisher: Buccaneer Books Pub. Date: August, 1997 Format: Library Binding Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 1.84 (31 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Ehrlich fails to see that technology innovation isn't static
Comment: In the predictable style of most misanthropic environmental doomsayers, Ehrlich conveniently forgets that humans are capable of confronting pressing problems with technological and social innovation, as though we're all doomed to live in the 1970s (or the present) forever. People who think Earth is about to be depleted of its resources might want to check out books like "Mining the Sky" by John Lewis. There are enough resources in space to support us for a long time. And yes I know we don't yet have the capability to get to them yet but there's no law of nature that says we can't eventually.
Rating: 1
Summary: Once a knucklehead, always a knucklehead
Comment: There seems to be something in people that always wants to look on the bad side of things, even if the bad side of things doesn't exist. Why, I don't know, but it has allowed the author to make a 40-year career of being wrong on EVERYTHING, and yet he's still taken seriously by some people. If I was to scream that 2+2=5 all my life, I would be dismissed as a nut. Yet the author is doing exactly the same thing...and is not dismissed as a nut. Go figure. This is a ridiculous book. Read it for humor, and then goggle at how seriously the author takes himself. What a twit.
Rating: 1
Summary: It can't survive hindsight
Comment: Paul Ehrlich begins the work that gave him instant notoriety (infamy) by saying: "I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time."
He spends the next 180 pages proving conclusively that such is not the case.
It isn't simply that his predictions turned out to be wrong in some of the particulars, but rather that they were so completely wrong that they will NEVER come to pass (though he unrepentantly continues to beat the same drum).
Ehrlich predicted that, by the end of the 20th century, human want would outstrip available resources; whole areas of human endeavor would screech to a halt due to resource scarcity; England would, in all likelihood, cease to exist; India would collapse due to its inability to feed itself; and "inevitable" mass starvation would sweep the globe (including the US). We were on the brink of disaster in 1968, and the future looked very, very dark. In fact, he asserts, "it is now too late to take action to save many of those people."
And yet none of these things have come to pass. Why? Because Ehrlich makes the same mistake that Malthus did: he confuses the concept of finite resources with the notion that they (and the demand for them) are fixed. This is the point that Ehrlich's detractors (most notably Julian Simon) have been making for decades.
Ehrlich did not foresee the technological innovations (the Green Revolution) that have been such a boon to mankind, or changes in both the supply and demand of various resources (such as those in his famous bet with Simon). But such changes were inevitable (far more than the catastrophe that he predicted). The entire history of human endeavor is adaptive. As resources become more scarce, their costs rise. As those costs rise, incentives are created to find alternatives or increase supply or decrease demand. Thus, assuming that either resource availability and/or per capita demand is fixed is not merely an oversight - it is inexcusably poor science.
This is also why claims that "The Population Bomb" was some sort of self-correcting prophecy - that by drawing attention to the problem, disaster was averted - hold no water. This fallacy is based on the assumption that long-term concerns about population growth are somehow more pressing than current hunger problems. Norman Borlaug (one of many involved in the Green Revolution) would have a good laugh about that one. Unfortunately, the major cause of hunger in the world today (in countries like Ethiopia) is not resource scarcity, but political realities (despots) that prevent access to food.
One last point to Ehrlich's defenders: much has been made about cancer rates (and Simon's purported unwillingness to bet on them). But a rise in cancer incidence was to be expected, not because of pollutants or chemicals or environmental degradations, but because cancer is primarily a disease of the aged. The population "explosion" did not occur because more children were/are being born (the opposite is true), but that children were/are no longer "dropping like flies." The average age of the population has risen markedly and so, of course, has the incidence of age related diseases.
My favorite example of Ehrlich-speak: "Enough of fantasy.... Just remember that, at the current growth rate, in a few thousand years everything in the visible universe would be converted into people, and the ball of people would be expanding at the speed of light."
I'm SO glad he'd had "enough of fantasy."
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Title: How Many People Can the Earth Support? by Joel E. Cohen ISBN: 0393314952 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 1995 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson ISBN: 0618249060 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Population Explosion by Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich ISBN: 0671732943 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: April, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environment Rhetoric Threatens Our Future by Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich ISBN: 1559634847 Publisher: Shearwater Books Pub. Date: February, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge by Lester R. Brown, Gary Gardner, Brian Halweil ISBN: 0393319067 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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