Paul R. Ehrlich, Who Alarmed the World With ‘The Population Bomb,’ Dies at 93

NYT ^ | 3/15/26 | Keith Schneider

[Borges]

Paul R. Ehrlich, an eminent ecologist and population scientist whose best-selling book, “The Population Bomb,” was celebrated as a prescient warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine but later criticized by conservatives and academic rivals for what they called its sky-is-falling rhetoric, died on Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 93.

His death, at a nursing facility in the retirement community where he lived, was caused by complications of cancer, his daughter, Lisa Marie Daniel, said.

As a young professor of biology at Stanford University in the mid-1960s, Dr. Ehrlich was known for his absorbing lectures on evolution, in which he described what plants and animals faced on a planet stressed by industrial pollution and rapid population growth. He distilled those lectures into an article published in December 1967 in New Scientist magazine.

[vladimir998]

And he died just as wrong as when he was alive.

[KarlInOhio]

My family was only able to survive the Great Starvation of the 1970s by eating remaindered copies of the Population Bomb.

[Drew68]

Instrumental in convincing countless millions of middle-class whites to forego having children as the population of illiterate 65-IQ Third World savages exploded into the billions.

I guess they didn't read Ehrlich's book. Probably because they can't read.

[SaxxonWoods]

Global Warming killed him, just like he said it would.

[Right_Wing_Madman]

Ehrlich was celebrated in the academic community for being wrong about everything.

[fhayek]

Well, he didn’t die of starvation, so there’s that.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

We all died years ago, we just didn’t get the memo.

[Varda]

He was a Malthusian. I never understand the siren song of that idea.

[fruser1]

celebrated as a prescient warning of a coming age of food shortages and famine but later criticized by conservatives

Ok, so when exactly was the age of food shortages that appeared after 1967?

[rlmorel]

I believe he is one who never gave up the con.

I could be wrong here, but I believe Ehrlich pivoted from overpopulation, to global cooling, to global warming with barely a flicker of apology.

He was a Leftist at his core.

[pissant]

Good, he just decreased the surplus population of abject retards. He was one of the holy trinity, according to gaia worshipping bolsheviks:

Rachel Carson, Ehrlbitch, and Algore.

[fhayek]

...but later criticized by conservatives and academic rivals for what they called its sky-is-falling rhetoric...

In other words, people who were right.

[dadgum]

“prescient” ???

I don’t think the author understands the meaning of that word.

More like “half-baked”.

Idiots and liars - they all are tiresome irritations.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

There is a surplus of mud people. Camp of the Saints.

[SunkenCiv]

The rest of the 'Julian Simon' keyword, sorted:

• Your washing machine is actually a time machine [11/12/2025]
• The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics [10/14/2025]
• The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation [04/02/2018]
• The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon and Our Gamble over Earth's Future [01/13/2017]
• You Worry. You Shouldn't : Overpopulation and Resource Exhaustion [06/18/2012]
• Population bomb still a fizzer 40 years on [11/09/2010]
• The 'Population Bomb' Has Fizzled [09/01/2010]
• The New Scientist? (30 years after losing the bet to Julian Simon, Paul Ehrlich is at it again) [10/04/2009]
• Czar 54, Who Are You? [07/20/2009]
• MSM Shuns Embarrassing 'The Population Bomb' Anniversary [06/29/2008]
• Population Implosion [12/08/2007]
• In Dusty Archives, a Theory of Affluence [08/08/2007]
• Wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich [12/24/2005]
• Fill 'er Up with Oils Sands! [10/31/2005]
• IDEOLOGICAL IDIOCIES, book review: Intellectual Morons: Smart People Fall For Stupid Ideas [11/01/2004]
• Tampa Bay tapped as new source of drinking water [06/10/2003]
• America: A Free Economy, a Prosperous Nation [07/05/2002]
• The world has more oil not less [12/24/2001]

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Another rotten scoundrel now punching chunks in the boiler room of Hell.

[EnderWiggin1970]

He was ludicrously wrong in his neo-Malthusianism, which makes it fitting that the NYT would provide this obsequious obituary.

[Ge0ffrey]

He was dead wrong.

[Reily]

His population dynamics expertise was from butterfly populations. A bit of a stretch to apply it to humans.