Posted on 02/07/2007 7:29:54 PM PST by Reaganesque
The Population Bomb
The Population Bomb (1968) is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich. A best-selling work, it predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion". The book predicted that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death", that nothing can be done to avoid mass famine greater than any in the history, and radical action is needed to limit the overpopulation.
The book is primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument, that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. It assumes that the population is going to raise exponentially, on the other hand the resources, in particular food, are already at their limits.
Unlike Thomas Malthus, Ehrlich predicted that not only the overpopulation will hit in some indefinite future, but it is certain to lead to a massive disaster in the next few years. Also unlike Malthus, Ehrlich didn't see any means of avoiding the catastrophe, and the solutions for limiting its scope he proposed were much more radical, including starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures.
"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will 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..."
The book deals not only with food shortage, but also with other kinds of crises caused by rapid population growth, expressing the possibility of disaster in broader terms. A "population bomb", as defined in the book, requires only three things:
* A rapid rate of change
* A limit of some sort
* Delays in perceiving the limit
Also worth noting is Ehrlich's introduction of the Impact formula:
I = PAT (where I=Impact, PAT = Population x Affluence x Technology)
Hence, Ehrlich argues, affluent technological nations have a greater per capita impact than poorer nations.
The predictions not only did not come true, the world developed in a direction completely opposite to the one predicted by Ehrlich, without implementing any of his proposed measures. The world food production grows exponentially at a rate much higher than the population growth, in both developed and developing countries, partially due to the efforts of Norman Borlaug's "Green Revolution" of the 1960s, and the food per capita level is the highest in the history. On the other hand population growth rates significantly slowed down, especially in the developed world [1]. The famine has not been eliminated, but its root cause is political instability, not global food shortage [2]. On the other hand, in the 1980s and 1990s in a number of countries (first of all in Tropical Africa) population growth rates still exceeded the economic growth ones, and on quite a few occasions political instability was caused just by food shortages (see, for example, Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends in Africa by Andrey Korotayev and Daria Khaltourina).
Although Ehrlich’s theory influenced 1960’s and 1970's public policy, a post-analysis by Keith Greiner (1994) observed that Ehrlich’s projections could not possibly have held the scrutiny of time because Ehrlich applied the financial compound interest formula to population growth. Using two sets of assumptions based on the Ehrlich theory, it was shown that the theorized growth in population and subsequent scarcity of resources could not have occurred on Ehrlich’s time schedule. The historical US population growth was more linear than exponential. Nevertheless The Population Bomb sold many copies and raised the general awareness of population and environmental issues. Early 21st century analyses of the age distribution of the US population show that growth in population declined after “the pill” was approved for widespread use (though the population continues to grow at a rate of 0.91% per annum [3]). That approval was likely influenced by Ehrlich’s work. (Reference: Greiner, K. (1994, Winter). The baby boom generation and How they Grew, Chance: A Magazine of the American Statistical Association.)
There has been much criticism of the book from demographers today (chiefly Phillip Longman in his 2004 The Empty Cradle) who argue that the "baby boom" of the 1950s was an aberration unlikely to be repeated and that population decline in an urbanized society is by nature hard to prevent because of the economic liability children become. Paleoconservatives have been especially critical of the ideas of the book: The Population Bomb made the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century in 2003 and was #11 ("honorable" mention) in Human Events' Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The rankings serve only to display the controversy stemming from the book. It is hard to derive any value from the rankings, since both organizations are highly partisan and pick and rank accordingly. E.g. Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (which lead to the banning of DDT), were among others to be considered most harmful on Human Events' list.
BTW...In looking this info up, I found that Dr. Ehrlich maintains that he wasn't wrong and that he had a valid point despite the fact that none of his dire predictions coming true. Typical Liberal.
I get to be first? GEORGE BUSH'S FAULT!
I remember Erlich. I also remember that we are in for global cooling in the late 60's and 70's until Global warming took over.
Frankly I am tired of liberals!
There truly is no point in arguing with a liberal.
BTW - The guy teaches high school history.
Sean Hannity gave a global warming cult member a pretty good beating tonight.
It's the quadrophonic of the 21st century.
Instead of investing true wealth in the next generation, humans tend to spend it on themselves. (It is rather scarce resources that go to one's offspring and the growing of family.)
I personally theorize that this resoundingly explains gay decadence. It is a natural population control -- who needs kids when you are so fat and happy with yourself?
That's the great thing about being a liberal. Even when you lose an argument, you win.
Oh, and down is up, too.
If you read Mark Steyn's book "America Alone" .. you can plainly see from the stats he provides that a "population bomb" is not going to be our problem.
And .. neither is global warming. The "bomb" will be that we will run out of population from the western nations of Europe (because of abortion), and the Islamic nations (who have 6-10 children each), will be populating the world.
America alone is not decreasing her population .. and that's why we WILL SURVIVE THIS ISLAMIC ONSLAUGHT.
"Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions....By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine".
Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University. Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
That Rosenberg? woman was something else wasn't she?...on H&C discussing how "we're all toast" if we don't heed the Global warming guru's........LOL
William Stanley Jevons was one of the greatest economists of the 19th century. With Menger and Walras he was one of the three co-discoverers of marginal utility theory, the idea that as we consume more of something the value of each incremental unit diminishes. We value a glass of water to stop us dying of thirst much more than the same glass to help top up our swimming pools.
However, he fell into the Malthusian trap in The Coal Question (1865). In this influential book he treated coal as the essential resource for the British industrial economy and argued that it was exhaustible.
He worried about "our present rapid multiplication when brought into comparison with a fixed amount of material resource" and feared that Britain's industrial growth would come to a halt because its coal reserves were running out. Worse still he argued "... it is useless the think of substituting any other kind of fuel for coal."
"... some day our coal seams [may] be found emptied to the bottom, and swept clean like a coal-cellar. Our fires and furnaces ... suddenly extinguished, and cold and darkness ... left to reign over a depopulated country."
Jevons, William Stanley. [1865, 1906] 1965. The Coal Question. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.
I`ll never forget a few years ago, Al Gore came here to NYC in the dead of winter to speak about global warming, and it was one of the coldest days of the year, something like 10 degrees ouside, (which is not unusual here in the dead of winter. Matter of fact it is around that temperature now.)
And when someone asked Al about this, how can it be so cold out when there is global warming, he replied "it was cold out like this because of global warming"
So you know what this told me? You can`t win with these psychopaths...If it`s warm outside it`s global warming, if it`s cold outside it`s global warming. Whatever you say or do, you will never change their minds because they are insane people.
His work had real negative consequences. The West is underbreeding itself to extinction and his work is one more excuse for abortion.
We are having global cooling RIGHT NOW. The 1960's prediction finally came true!
We say that Global Warming visited Bob Jones University!
If libs truley believe in their own nonsense, they can help the planet out by "hari-cari".
Good luck with that libs!
Global warming freaks and peak oil freaks sound just like this. It is all a load of irrational crap.
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