Everything about The Population Bomb totally explained
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.
General
The book is primarily a repetition of the
Malthusian catastrophe argument, that
population growth will outpace
agricultural growth unless controlled. Ehrlich assumes that the population is going to rise exponentially, but that the available resources, in particular food, are already at their limits. Whereas
Thomas Malthus didn't make a firm prediction of imminent catastrophe, Ehrlich warned of a potential massive disaster in the subsequent few years. Unlike Malthus, Ehrlich didn't see any means of avoiding the disaster entirely. The solutions for limiting its scope that he proposed, including starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures, were much more radical than those postulated by Malthus.
» "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
The predictions came true, but the effects are mainly unfelt in the developed world. 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 history. On the other hand population growth rates significantly slowed down, especially in the developed world
(External Link
). Famine hasn't been eliminated, but its root cause is political instability, not global food shortage
(External Link). 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 [ISBN5484005604]).
Although Ehrlich's theory influenced 1960s and 1970s public policy, a post-analysis by
Keith Greiner (1994) observed that Ehrlich's projections couldn't 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 couldn't have occurred on Ehrlich’s time schedule. Data actually seems to suggest linear, albeit very strong, growth. For example historical US population growth was more linear than exponential. The world population doubled from 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion in 1999 and is expected to grow by another 3 billion by 2042
(External Link). 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
(External Link). 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.)
The Population Bomb was written at the suggestion of
David Brower, at the time the executive director of the environmentalist
Sierra Club, following an article Ehrlich wrote for the
New Scientist magazine in December,
1967. In that article, Ehrlich predicted that the world would experience famines sometime between
1970 and
1985 due to population growth outstripping resources. Amongst other remarks, Ehrlich also stated that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," and "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." These predictions didn't come to pass. In the book's 1971 edition, the latter prediction had been removed. An oft-cited cause of these famine aversions is the "
Green Revolution", as it was called by the
U.S. Agency for International Development in
1968 (External Link) Another oft-cited cause was the sharp drop in the fertility rate which occurred in the developed world during the 1960s and 1970s.
==I = PAT==
Also worth noting is Ehrlich's introduction of the Impact formula:
» :
I = P x
A x
T (where I = Environmental Impact, P = Population, A = Affluence, T = Technology)
Hence, Ehrlich argues, affluent technological nations have a greater
per capita impact than poorer nations.
Criticisms
Critics have compared Ehrlich to
Thomas Malthus for his multiple predictions of famine and economic catastrophe. The leading critic of Ehrlich was
Julian Lincoln Simon, a
libertarian theorist and the author of the book
The Ultimate Resource, a book which argues a larger population is a benefit, not a cost. To test their two contrasting views on resources, in
1980, Ehrlich and Simon entered into a
wager over how the price of metals would move during the
1980s. Ehrlich predicted that the price would increase as metals became more scarce in the Earth's crust, while Simon insisted the price of metals had fallen throughout human history and would continue to do so. Ehrlich lost the bet. Indeed such was the decline in the price of the five metals Ehrlich selected, Simon would have won even without taking inflation into account.
In Ehrlich's books, many predictions are made, for example,
The Population Bomb begins "[t]he battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death," while in "The End of Affluence", Ehrlich stated, "One general prediction can be made with confidence: the cost of feeding yourself and your family will continue to increase. There may be minor fluctuations in food prices, but the overall trend will be up". According to Ehrlich, the United States would see its
life expectancy drop to 42 years by 1980 because of
pesticide usage, and the nation's population would drop to 22.6 million by 1999 . Criticizing Ehrlich on similar grounds as Simon was
Ronald Bailey, a leader in the
wise use movement, who wrote a book in 1993 entitled
Eco-Scam where he blasted the views of Ehrlich,
Lester Brown,
Carl Sagan and other environmental theorists. While of the repeated theorizing Simon complained "As soon as one predicted disaster doesn't occur, the doomsayers skip to another... why don't the [they] see that, in the aggregate, things are getting better? Why do they always think we're at a turning point -- or at the end of the road?"
In his book
Betrayal of Science and Reason, Ehrlich discussed these earlier predictions of his and re-affirmed his stances on population and resource issues.
Ehrlich also has critics on the political
left. These include
Betsy Hartmann, author of the
1987 book
Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control & Contraceptive Choice. Hartmann accuses Ehrlich and other environmentalists who focus on
population control of
misanthropy, and believes that such focus is antithetical to activism on issues of
social class and
feminism.
There has been much criticism of the book from
demographers today (chiefly
Phillip Longman in his 2004
The Empty Cradle) who argues 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.
The Skeptical Environmentalist by
Bjørn Lomborg disputes many of the claims in the book.
Various
Indices of Economic Freedom claim that lack of
property rights, not high population density, is the real cause of famine. Thus, countries such as
China,
India,
South Korea, and
Botswana were able to eliminate their famines by adopting property rights. Likewise, countries such as
Ethiopia,
Zimbabwe, and
North Korea created famines when they abolished property rights. Ehrlich's book doesn't explain why
South Korea is so much better off than
North Korea, but an analysis of
property rights explains this difference very well.
Ranking on Conservatives' harmful book lists
Traditional conservatives 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.
Ehrlich answers critics
In a 2004
Grist Magazine interview, Ehrlich acknowledged some specific predictions he'd made, in the years around the time his
Population Bomb was published, that had
not come to pass. However, as to a number of his fundamental ideas and assertions he maintained that facts and science proved them valid.
Among other things Ehrlich had to say was the following:
(External Link) In
The Population Explosion (1990), in a footnote (p. 295), he writes:
Further Information
Get more info on 'The Population Bomb'.
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