Population control advocate Paul Ehrlich passed away on March 13 at the age of 93, marking the end of a notable career that was, well, full of mistakes. Initially a butterfly researcher at Stanford in the 1960s, Ehrlich entered the overpopulation debate with a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. This speech propelled him to pen his book, *The Population Bomb*, in 1968, where he warned of a disastrous famine that he believed would kill hundreds of millions in the 1970s.
Surprisingly, that didn’t occur. Instead, food production improved, and population growth surged.
In a 1969 interview with the *New York Times*, Ehrlich claimed that due to overpopulation and environmental pollution, “we all have to realize that in 20 years, unless we’re very lucky, we’re all going to disappear in a cloud of blue vapor.” Yet, even as he predicted humanity’s demise by 1989, we’re still here, and, you know, thriving.
I think one of the most telling moments came in 1980 when he famously bet free-market economist Julian Simon $1,000 that the prices of five metals—chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten—would increase due to shortages. Instead, those metal prices dropped by 43%. Yeah, another miscalculation, and he lost that bet.
Even in his final days, Ehrlich clung to the belief that Earth’s population stood at only 1.5 billion, ignoring the reality of around 8.28 billion people currently inhabiting the planet. That’s a gap of over 6.75 billion, which is quite substantial.
Ehrlich’s unusual leap from studying butterflies to predicting human population dynamics not only made him a household name—he even appeared on Johnny Carson’s show twenty times—but also earned him a place in the National Academy of Sciences. But as it turns out, none of his forecasts were accurate, and he never acknowledged the absurdity of his errors.
In a 2009 piece titled, “The Population Bomb Revisited,” Ehrlich acknowledged that while his analysis was flawed, he emphasized that “science never creates certainty.” But isn’t the purpose of science to attain certainty? They were able to land on the moon in 1969 because of reliable predictions based on Newton’s laws—true science cultivates certainty, after all.
Ehrlich’s excuse was to blame others, stating, “One of our personal strategies is to have our work carefully reviewed by other scientists, and the Population Bomb was no exception.” But really, the *Population Bomb* wasn’t presented as a rigorous scientific study; it was more a provocative discussion about overpopulation. He even suggested at one point that contraceptives could be added to water supplies. There was, frankly, no scientific consensus on his extreme views, which he sometimes presented as if there were. Science isn’t about consensus.
Critics often label him as a “Malthusian,” after Thomas Malthus, a British economist who early on claimed that population growth would deplete food supplies. Malthus was incorrect as well, but he didn’t have the same disastrous implications. He died in 1834 before witnessing the technological advancements in agriculture.
In any case, Ehrlich found himself wrong at almost every turn throughout his career, yet he continued to receive recognition, perhaps due to the prevailing political climate. It’s interesting, really, that while he couldn’t seem to face up to his repeated failures, he did manage to reshape public fear around overpopulation.
No, he wasn’t a Malthusian; he was simply Paul Ehrlich, the embodiment of the *Population Bomb*.
