Paul Ehrlich: The Bombardier Returns

Twenty-two years ago, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist whose specialty was butterflies, burst upon the national scene with an extremely successful book — two editions, 28 printings, 2 million copies sold. It was The Population Bomb.1

Now Ehrlich is back with a new book, The Population Explosion.2 Written with wife Anne, it purports to show “why overpopulation is our #1 environmental problem.”3

Before inspecting Ehrlich’s latest work, let’s go back 22 years and check Ehrlich’s credibility. Let’s examine some of the statements and predictions that he made in The Bomb.

The very first three sentences of the prologue to The Bomb will do for starters: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famines — hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.…”4

Of course, nothing of the sort happened.

Famine Deaths?

Lester R. Brown, president of Worldwatch Institute, a population control think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a man who has been described as “one of the most vociferous of the pessimists” where famine is concerned.5 Brown looked at the eight famines which occurred during the years 1968–1983 and set the toll of “estimated deaths” at 3,370,000 people — at most 3% of what Ehrlich predicted.6 Even Brown’s total may be overstated, as shown by Dr. Julian Simon’s attempts to verify the true famine death statistics from the Sahel, one of the eight famine areas.7

Mrs. Ehrlich, writing of the “famine…raging in many…[African] countries…” claimed that the “estimated [famine] deaths last year [1983] were in the hundreds of thousands .…”8 But the yearly toll would have to be at least 10 million, in order to yield Mr. Ehrlich’s “hundreds of millions” figure for the decade.9

By any objective analysis the death toll from famine “in the 1970’s,” the period for which Ehrlich predicted massive famine deaths, was but a mere fraction of his figures.

Ehrlich implicitly conceded this in a 1979 article written with wife Anne, wherein the Ehrlichs noted that “famines have largely dropped from the headlines” and wrote of “…the absence of a large-scale famine…”10 But the Ehrlichs still had their despair to fall back upon, and thus they continued to claim that “Widespread famine could…be just around the comer,” listing several ecological problems which “…could precipitate massive famines.”11

Earlier, Ehrlich indicated that he didn’t really believe his own 1968 famine claims, as witness this tell-tale admission concerning a “…nutritional disaster that seems likely to overtake humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, the 1980s).”12 Note that the predicted “disaster,” formerly a certainty, now only seems likely, and its possible time frame has been set a decade further into the future.

Indeed, even within The Bomb itself, Ehrlich had hedged his bets, stating that “…massive famines will occur soon, possibly in the early 1970’s, certainly by the early 1980’s.”13 Ehrlich thus backs off a very considerable distance from his prediction that famine “in the 1970’s” is an absolute certainty, retreating to “likely,” and then to just a “possible” occurrence.

But what of the years from “the early 1980’s” to the present? Who can forget the horrifying scenes of African famines which television all too frequently brought into the nation’s living rooms? Maybe Ehrlich was just a bit off in his dates, but surely his famine predictions were now being proven correct? Well, not exactly.

Although droughts in recent years led to crop failures and livestock deaths throughout much of East Africa, the famines which resulted were almost entirely due to inept government policies and the deliberate actions of rival factions involved in the civil wars racking the region.

In Ethiopia, for instance, “…it was war, as much as drought that caused the famine in the first place…[since] an important element in the Communist regime’s war against the guerrillas… [was] the destruction of tribal farming systems.…”14 Other reports agreed that “…the latest Ethiopian disaster is as much man-made as it is natural…[a result] of the cruelty that a government can exert against its own people”15 and “not so much a natural catastrophe as a deliberate state-sponsored atrocity .…”16

In the Sudan, although food was available and the “harvest [was] the best in a decade…people are starving because of a civil war…[in which] the terrible new weapon is…food, not bullets.”17 Another report from the Sudan stated that rival armies had “cynically starved a quarter-million people to death to improve their bargaining positions.”18 One reporter flatly stated that the “principal cause of the [Sudan] famine has been a war.”19

One report concluded that “Government policy sets the stage for all famines. If proper policies are in place, natural disaster need not evolve into famine. Poor policies and armed conflicts heighten a nation’s vulnerability to natural disaster…”20 The researchers specifically noted that “Armed conflicts coincided with drought conditions in Chad, Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Mozambique during the famines…[and] the worst hit regions of Ethiopia [were the ones that] had been at war…for 22 and nine years respectively.”21

Reports from Ethiopia,22 the Sudan,23 and other African countries24 document the role of civil wars in causing or exacerbating the famines ravaging those lands. Contrary to Ehrlich’s claims, “hundreds of millions” have not starved to death, nor are the tragic famines which do exist the result of an intrinsic population vs food imbalance supposedly caused by “over-population.”

Indeed, the African countries currently experiencing famines are among the least populated and have some of the lowest population densities in the entire world: Ethiopia (51.7 million people, 471,776 sq. mi., 109 people/sq.mi.), Sudan (25 million, 966,757 sq. mi., 25.8 people/sq.mi.), Chad (5 million, 495,755 sq. mi., 10.0 people/sq.mi.) and Mozambique (15.7 million, 309,494 sq. mi., 50.8 people/sq.mi.).25

In fact, all of the African famines of the ‘70s and ‘80s occurred in little-populated countries. The widely publicized famine in the Sahel region of Africa in the early 1970s, for example, involved some 20 million people (of whom pessimist Brown estimates 100,000 died) in six countries which occupy a total area of more than 2 million square miles — an area equal to two-thirds of the entire continental United States, excluding Alaska.26 Obviously, the African famines have little, if anything, to do with the food demands of teeming populations. The underlying problem of the Sahel is not overpopulation but rather a huge area so grossly underpopulated that it remains almost totally undeveloped.27

India: Food Shortages?

Let us tum now to another Ehrlich prediction made 22 years ago. The bombardier pooh-poohed a projection that India would be self-sufficient in food by 1971, calling it a “fantasy.”28 Ehrlich spelled it out for his readers: “…this means the Indians hope to be able to feed 50 to 70 million more people in four years than they cannot feed today.”29 Ehrlich stated that he “…[has] yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971, if ever.”30

Despite Ehrlich and his unidentified “anyone,”31 the fact is that India did achieve food self-sufficiency in 1971, exactly on schedule.32 At the very time Ehrlich was “proving” the impossibility of India ever achieving such a feat, Indian scientists were working with “…[grains imported] from Mexico, Taiwan and the Philippines…on an intensive plan to develop new strains for maize, wheat, and rice.”33

“At the end of 1967…improved varieties…were in fact available. The lid was therefore taken off the rapid dissemination of the new technology in agriculture. The first result…was that yields were doubled…this year, 1971, instead of having a net deficit of food, there is in fact a net surplus. There is already a new problem… the problem of storage of food grains.”34

Dr. Norman Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his pioneering work on the miracle grains which led to the Green Revolution, detailed the spectacular gains in Indian wheat production: “…from the 1964–5 pre-Green Revolution record crop of 12.3 million tons to 16.5, 18.7 and 20.0 million tons during the 1968, 1969 and 1970 harvests respectively.”35

Although India has suffered severe droughts several times since the Green Revolution, the famines which surely would have occurred in the past, were kept in check. In 1973–4, when Indian food stocks were still small, food imports were still needed, but recently India was able to survive the “worst drought in decades…because it has a food surplus…”36

Demographer William Peterson said, “India’s 1987 drought was the most destructive in 125 years… [and] until very recently such a natural disaster would have been the precursor to a major famine. Now the government has in reserve enormous stores [of food] out of past surpluses…The dread prospect of famine has thus been replaced by worries about the strain on the transport and distribution systems.…”37

Earthwatch, an International Planned Parenthood publication and a vociferous advocate of population control, said that “Thanks to increased productivity…India has a buffer stock of 23 million tons [of grain]…and can cope with…crisis.…”38

Ehrlich himself reported that “In 1968,” the year he issued The Bomb and totally dismissed the possibility of India being able to feed itself, “the Indian wheat harvest was 35 percent above the previous record…”39 The Ehrlichs further admitted that “…by mid-1968 most of Northern India was completely out of the famine conditions that had held sway several years before…[and] wheat and rice were superabundant .…”40

Grudgingly, the Ehrlichs have conceded that “As long as the current pace [of food production] can be maintained…India should be able to postpone famine.”41

Oxygen Depletion?

According to Ehrlich (1968) “We are…depleting the world’s supply of oxygen by burning…vast quantities of fossil fuels… When the rate of oxygen consumption exceeds the rate at which it is produced, the oxygen content of the atmosphere will decrease [and] oxygen depletion will occur.…”42

In a text book they wrote, the Ehrlichs worry about the “…serious…danger of interrupting the oxygen cycle…on a planetary scale.”43 According to the Ehrlichs, “All the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by photosynthesis. Americans are among the world’s largest per capita oxygen consumers.”44 They cited an “ecologist,” who “calculated that for the contiguous United States in 1966, oxygen production was only about 60 percent of the amount consumed.”45

The Ehrlichs continued their doomsday scenario: “One of man’s major ecological effects on this planet appears to be the reduction of photosynthesis, and thus of the production of oxygen…the potential for the future is ominous.”46 According to the Ehrlichs, “Man…[had] replaced vast areas of [oxygen producing] forest with plant communities less productive of oxygen, and must replace even more to increase his food supply…in the United States alone an area of land roughly equal in size to the state of Rhode Island is covered by new construction every six months, and built-over land produces no oxygen at all.”47

But Doctor Wallace S. Broecker, a Columbia University professor and director of the geochemistry laboratory at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at Palisades, New York, conclusively proved that “If we were to bum all known fossil fuel reserves we would use less than 3 percent of the available oxygen.”48

Dr. Broecker also answered the argument that “man’s alteration of photosynthetic rates [was causing] a resulting change in the oxygen content of the atmosphere,” and flatly stated that “…the oxygen supply is immune to such changes,” and “is not vanishing as some have predicted.”49 Broecker concluded that “… the molecular oxygen supply in the atmosphere and in the…ocean are not threatened by man’s activities in the foreseeable future. Molecular oxygen is one resource that is virtually unlimited.”50

Ehrlich later told the truth about the atmospheric oxygen supply, but he never admitted or corrected his earlier errors. The Ehrlichs stated that “…there is no danger that man’s destruction of forests and other plant communities will cause an oxygen shortage.”51

U.S. Birth Rate To Rise?

Ehrlich claimed that “In the United States the current low birth rates soon will be replaced by higher rates as more post World War II ‘baby boom’ children move into their reproductive years.”52 Carefully analyzing the age structure of the U.S. population, the Ehrlichs predicted that “…barring a tremendous drop in the fertility rate, a considerable rise in the American crude birth rate can be expected in the 1970s.”53

But in fact the birth rate sank to new low levels in subsequent years, and Ehrlich himself was forced to admit that he had been “dead wrong.”54 Modestly, Ehrlich shared the blame for his prediction gone awry: “Virtually all demographers thought that the early 1970s would be a time of rising birth rates in the United States…We agreed with them; their reasoning made sense. But we were all dead wrong. In the early 1970s the women who had been born in the postwar baby boom were in their early 20s, their prime reproductive years…but contrary to all expectations, the birth rate plunged dramatically .…”55

Perhaps the answer lies in a remark that Professor Alfred Sauvy, the noted French demographer, made about Ehrlich: “In his numerous books he bears witness…to a deep love of nature and a consummate ignorance of demography.”56

The Bomb’s Covers: Shuffling Numbers

The front covers of various printings of The Bomb have told a shifting story. For instance, The Bomb’s first edition, at least through the first 13 printings, proclaimed that “While you are reading these words four people will have died from starvation. Most of them children.”57 Suddenly, the cover of the revised edition upped the starvation toll to “five people” and added that during the time required to read the cover’s 21 word sentence, “forty more babies have been born.”58

Fifteen months later The Bomb’s cover had returned to the original “four people” allegedly starving, and the number of births had plummeted to “twenty-four.”59

If Ehrlich was correct at each point about the figures in question, the world suffered a 25% increment in starvation deaths in this period, quickly followed by a reduction of 20%. At the same time the world’s birth rate plunged 40%. Of course, no scientist or demographer reported any such thing.

Perhaps the real explanation lies in Ehrlich’s mixed metaphor: “no matter how you slice it, population is a numbers game.”60 You count numbers; you slice baloney.

Summing Up

According to Arthur Dyck, Professor of Population Ethics at Harvard, the Ehrlichs “have made astounding factual errors in their calculations of strains on our environment.”61 Citing a devastating critique of one of the Ehrlichs’ overpopulation books,62 which appeared in a publication of Planned Parenthood’s Alan Guttmacher Institute, Dyck noted the Ehrlichs’ “misstatements of the need for water in the United States, errors in estimating annual fish production, large overstatements of the existence of DDT in the environment, etc.”63

One could go on and on, but suffice it to say that Paul Ehrlich (with or without wife Anne) is wrong: wrong on his predictions, wrong on his facts, wrong on his basic premise. Not only wrong but wrong at the top of his lungs, as one critic pointed out.64 Listen to the screaming adjectives and adverbs which this critic culled from just four pages written by the Ehrlichs in what is supposed to be a science textbook:

staggering, sobering, disaster (three times), enormously, drastically, catastrophic, dramatically, tremendous, highly lethal, extremely dangerous (twice), especially virulent, more severe, extremely fortunate, extremely vulnerable, almost total, not gruesome enough, colossal hazard, biological doomsday, superlethal, disastrously effective65

But whatever his decibel level, Ehrlich deserves no credibility at all.