The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation ‘The Population Bomb’ made dire predictions—and triggered a wave of repression around the world

Smithsonian Magazine ^ | January 2018 | Charles C. Mann

[daniel1212]

As 1968 began, Paul Ehrlich was an entomologist at Stanford University, known to his peers for his groundbreaking studies of the co-evolution of flowering plants and butterflies but almost unknown to the average person. That was about to change. In May, Ehrlich released a quickly written, cheaply bound paperback, The Population Bomb. Initially it was ignored. But over time Ehrlich’s tract would sell millions of copies and turn its author into a celebrity. It would become one of the most influential books of the 20th century—and one of the most heatedly attacked.

The first sentence set the tone: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” And humanity had lost. In the 1970s, the book promised, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” No matter what people do, “nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

Published at a time of tremendous conflict and social upheaval, Ehrlich’s book argued that many of the day’s most alarming events had a single, underlying cause: Too many people, packed into too-tight spaces, taking too much from the earth. Unless humanity cut down its numbers—soon—all of us would face “mass starvation” on “a dying planet.”

Ehrlich, now 85, told me recently that the book’s main contribution was to make population control “acceptable” as “a topic to debate.” But the book did far more than that. It gave a huge jolt to the nascent environmental movement and fueled an anti-population-growth crusade that led to human rights abuses around the world....

He was invited onto NBC’s “Tonight Show.”..For more than an hour he spoke about population and ecology, about birth control and sterilization, to an audience of tens of millions.

[Pelham]

The world population in 1918 was 1.8 billion.

Today, a mere 100 years later, it’s 7.6 billion.

Nature may decide for us whether that makes sense.

[dixjea]

Check out the book “Empty Planet” about the coming population bust.

[daniel1212]

The population of the United States has doubled in my father's lifetime and redoubled in my lifetime.

Actually, research shows it took about 300 years for the population to grow from 350 in 1610 (est., and did not include Native Americans until 1860) to its first 100 million (about 1915), then 50 years to attain to 200 million (1968), then about 40 years to grow to 300 million (2007), and this is estimated to grow to 400 million by 2060(about 50 years from 2007).

Look about you and consider how the left has compressed our liberties in the last three quarters of a century. Think of the strictures placed upon you for the environment. For example, it is no longer legal to burn a wood stove in parts of California. It is now the federal government that tells you as a rancher in Wyoming whether you could have a pond out back for geese and ducks. Your ability to charge rent in your New York City apartments has been controlled for decades by the government because of overcrowding. Your right to shoot a deer has been severely restricted and regulated and taxed. Your right to shoot a deer or a bear may have been entirely eliminated and there are no resemblance to the America of my forefathers who actually went hunting with Daniel Boone. The size of the toilet you flush and the bulb with which you illuminate the darkness is no longer a matter of choice. The list is endless, indeed there is virtually no area of your life that is not currently regulated by the federal government or the state government and much of that is justified by the need to protect your neighbor from you.

However, the problem is due to the character of the people. You can have a large families of disciplines yet happy kids in a crowded neighbor hood who never need the police called on them, as compared with those raised under the liberal victim-entitlement mentality. We live a low-income city with one of the most highest population densities in the nation, and it has about 100 police for about 2 sq. miles. Yet the pop. density was even greater in 1930 (46,000; though official census today is far less accurate here), yet i am sure 100 P.O. were not needed, and on Sundays churches were full.

Meanwhile due to The Pill, few Americans have children (though I myself am celibate by choice), or if they do it is one or two, and birth is delayed until the parents feel they can "afford" them, meaning avoid much sacrifice and spoil them and raise them as over sensitive, not having to share. As compared with when parents had children by nature, and all had to learn to share and sacrifice and learn to endure things.

And with an average age of 38.1 this place the US in the top third (61 out of 230) of countries in terms of average age (Italy is almost at the top), which is expected to grow to 43 by 2060, this would place the US in the top 20 countries in terms of average age, and soon the older will out number the younger.

[daniel1212]

That book about killed me. Read it high school. Lost hope. Got depressed and confused. Went into the occult. Hitch-hiked cross country. Thank God I had a praying aunt and was eventually led to the Lord.

Glory to God! Did you ever read the book "Walk across America" by Peter Jenkins ?

[KosmicKitty]

I guess Ehrlich never heard of Thomas Malthus.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

No, but it looks good. I read a summary where he received the Lord during his travels. People have told me I should write a book, so it’s inspiring from that perspective too.

[Salman]

Erlich is still around ans an “expert” on climate change.

[Albion Wilde]

Earth Day 1970 seemed to confirm that we were approaching an apocalypse.

If I'm not mistaken, Earth Day had its genesis in Philadelphia. At any rate, there was a Woodstock-like mass Earth Day gathering there in a huge public park overlooking the denser part of the city.

The Earth Day leader was a loudmouth named Ira Einhorn, who had a following of hippies as well as academics and other left wingers. Einhorn not too much later murdered his girlfriend, sealed her body in a trunk and fled to France.

The body eventually dripped through the ceiling below and a manhunt was on. Einhorn underwent plastic surgery in France, married a Frenchwoman and lived the wine and cheese life for many years. Even after he was eventually caught, France refused to extradite him because the U.S. still had the death penalty. He wasn't returned to the U.S. until many years after the murder.

I think he is still rotting in prison in Pennsylvania finally, though, thanks to past Philly D.A. Lynne Abraham.

[impimp]

I suggest you learn about a concept called “economies of scale”. For most products/businesses cost per unit sold goes down the more of it that you sell. The more people you sell a product to the more worthwhile it is to invest in industrial machinery, advanced artificial intelligence, etc. A small market is at a competitive disadvantage to a business located in a large market as a result of this. Only true free market globalism allows small nations to compete in a specific product...but to the degree that free market globalism doesn’t 100% exist you have larger countries with a comparative economic advantage.

So to protect America and its economy - WE NEED MORE PEOPLE.

[Grimmy]

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” ― George Orwell

[piasa]

They are... they’ve been gleeful at the prospect it could be Trump’s Katrina, that it could be used to soften sanctions on Iran, and Pelosi and others are drooling over the thought of all the spending it will let them get away with. Meanwhile you couldn’t get them to put a fraction of that effort into Alzheimer’s research.

[nathanbedford]

I suggest you learn about a concept called “economies of scale”

It is reassuring to know that you have not forgotten about the concept of economies of scale from your Econ 101 course. You will no doubt be pleased to know that I have for some time also been aware of this economic theory. Indeed, on September 23, 2019 I I posted:

Most of the arguments in favor of large population, or more intelligently of growing population, center on the need to create markets for consumption. In an age in which 3D printing is making us rethink the entire concept of economies of scale, should we not also rethink this maxim?

I am glad you also took note of the effect of globalism on this maxim. The theory that globalism does not affect economies of scale when considered from a national basis, comes a cropper in the real world. To date, much of our industrial production has been sent offshore to places like China and our burgeoning population, that you so welcome, has been converted from a producing society to a consuming society.

A consuming society can last only so long as the music plays. For a variety of reasons the United States has been able to enjoy the fruits of consuming in spite of relatively weak production because we are the world's reserve currency, because we are the world's great superpower, because inflation has been kept in check during the processes of sending jobs offshore and by immigration, reducing wages. The music may even now as we discuss this be stopping by a new refrain called, "coronavirus."

Finally, the comparative economic advantage of a large society really only works while the transition is incomplete as it is in America or when the country is enabled to put off the reckoning by other factors such I have described in the next preceding paragraph. No one contends that globalism is perfect, but its effect on the economies of scale must be reckoned. The solution is not to grow our own population but to perfect our industrial capacity to compete in a global world for that vast offshore consumer economy which outnumbers our consumer economy by a factor of about 20 to 1.

The key to perfecting our industrial capacity is not to add unlettered, un-numeric, immigrants or even to reward fecund American women, the key is to convert our culture and our education establishment to merit-based systems.

To permit our population to continue to double every generation is not to make America stronger but it is to half our liberty, double our misery and darken our destiny.

[impimp]

A small country that uses automation to its advantage to become a global leader at producing a product can see its advantage wiped away in an instant by a tariff or the threat of a tariff.

It is perverse to think a small country can be a world leader...it never was that way and it never will be that way. The USA can only remain the most powerful country in the world if its population is relatively close to China and India.

And we don’t just need degreed immigrants - we have a service economy that allows our brightest people to focus on what they do best.

[nathanbedford]

It is perverse to think a small country can be a world leader...it never was that way and it never will be that way.

Such a doctrinaire maxim declared with such certainty now and forever. Let's see how the maxim works out in the real world:

Ranking of world's largest trading countries: 1) China 2) USA 3) Germany 4) Japan 13 India 29) Indonesia.

#3) Germany population is equivalent to 1.07% of the total world population

#4) Japan population is equivalent to 1.62% of the total world population

#13) India population is equivalent to 17.7% of the total world population.

#29) Indonesia population is equivalent to 3.51% of the total world population.

It appears that perversity is breaking out all over the world.