The Population Bomb
This article needs additional citations for verification. (October 2009) |
Author | Paul R. Ehrlich |
---|---|
Language | English |
Subject | Population |
Publisher | Ballantine Books |
Publication date | 1968 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 201 |
The Population Bomb was a best-selling book written by Paul R. Ehrlich in 1968. It warned of the mass starvation of humans in 1970's and 1980s due to overpopulation and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. The book also popularized the previously coined term, population bomb.[1]
General
The book has been characterized by critics as primarily a repetition of the Malthusian catastrophe argument[citation needed] that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. Ehrlich assumes that the size of the population is going to rise exponentially, but that available resources, in particular food, are already at their limits.[citation needed] Although Thomas Malthus did not make a firm prediction of imminent catastrophe, Ehrlich warned of a potential massive disaster in the subsequent few years. Unlike Malthus, Ehrlich did not see any means of avoiding the disaster entirely.[citation needed]The solutions for limiting its scope that he discussed, including starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures, were much more radical than those discussed by Malthus.[citation needed]
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...[citation needed]
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,[citation needed] requires only three things:
- A rapid rate of change
- A limit of some sort
- Delays in perceiving the limit
Some of the predictions came true, but the effects are mainly unfelt in the developed world.[citation needed] The world food production grows exponentially at a rate much higher than the population growth, in both developed and developing countries,[citation needed] partially due to the efforts of Norman Borlaug's "Green Revolution" of the 1960s. The food per capita level is the highest in history, and, according to a Russian textbook published in 2006, population growth rates have significantly slowed, especially in the developed world [2].
Famine has not been eliminated, but its root cause has been political instability, not global food shortage.[3] The Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen, has argued that nations with democracy and a free press have virtually never suffered from extended famines.[citation needed]
Ehrlich's theory influenced 1960s and 1970s public policy,[citation needed]. However, a post-analysis by Keith Greiner published in 1994 in the magazine Chance, (a non technical, non peer reviewed publication of the American Statistical Association that is "intended to entertain as well as inform"),[4][5] Ehrlich's projections could not possibly have held the scrutiny of time. According to Greiner, that is because Ehrlich applied the financial compound interest formula to population growth. Using two sets of assumptions based on the Ehrlich theory,[clarification needed] Greiner argues that the theorized growth in population and subsequent scarcity of resources could not have occurred on Ehrlich’s time schedule.
This article may be unbalanced toward certain viewpoints. (October 2009) |
The Population Bomb sold many copies and raised the general awareness of population and environmental issues. It was written at the suggestion of David Brower,[citation needed] at the time the executive director of the environmentalist Sierra Club, following an article Ehrlich wrote for the New Scientist magazine in December, 1967.[citation needed] 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 did not come to pass.[verification needed] In the book's 1971 edition, the latter prediction had been removed. An oft-cited cause of these famine aversions[citation needed] is the "Green Revolution", as it was called by the U.S. Agency for International Development in 1968 [6] Another oft-cited cause [citation needed] 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 × A × T (where I = Environmental Impact, P = Population, A = Affluence, T = Technology)[clarification needed]
Hence, Ehrlich argues, affluent technological nations have a greater per capita impact than poorer nations.[further explanation needed]
Criticisms
This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. (October 2009) |
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 Cornucopian economist] and libertarian theorist who authored the book The Ultimate Resource, in which he argued that 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. Such was the decline in the price of the five metals Ehrlich selected that Simon would have won even without taking inflation into account.
In Ehrlich's books, it seems to some that 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,[citation needed] "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". In a magazine article published in 1969 titled "Eco-Catastrophe", Ehrlich predicted that 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.[7][verification needed] 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. Of the repeated theorizing, Simon complained "As soon as one predicted disaster doesn't occur, the doomsayers skip to another... why don't [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?"[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]
Ehrlich also has critics on the political left. These include author Betsy Hartmann, who contends in her 1987 book Reproductive Rights and Wrongs", that Ehrlich and other environmentalists who focus on population control are misanthropic, and anti-feminist.[8][verification needed]
Demographers have criticized the book; chiefly Phillip Longman, who in his 2004 book The Empty Cradle 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 children in such a society are an economic liability children.[citation needed]
The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg also disputes many of the claims in The Population Bomb.[citation needed]
Ehrlich answers critics
In a 2004 Grist Magazine interview,[9] Ehrlich acknowledged some specific predictions he had 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.
In answer to the question: "Were your predictions in The Population Bomb right?", Erlich responded:
Anne and I have always followed U.N. population projections as modified by the Population Reference Bureau -- so we never made "predictions," even though idiots think we have. When I wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, there were 3.5 billion people. Since then we've added another 2.8 billion -- many more than the total population (2 billion) when I was born in 1932. If that's not a population explosion, what is? My basic claims (and those of the many scientific colleagues who reviewed my work) were that population growth was a major problem. Fifty-eight academies of science said that same thing in 1994, as did the world scientists' warning to humanity in the same year. My view has become depressingly mainline!
External links
- Paul R Erlich and Anne H. Erlich. The Population Bomb Revisited, Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, (2009) I(3)
References and notes
- ^ The phrase "population bomb", was already in use. For example, see this article. Quality Analysis and Quality Control, Canadian Medical Association Journal, June 9, 1962, vol. 86, p. 1074
- ^ Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. "Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth", URRS Publishers, Moscow, Russia, 2006, (available in English).
- ^ "Food Security and Nutrition in the Last 50 Years", FAO Corporate Document Repository, publication date unavailable.
- ^ About Chance
- ^ Greiner, Keith. "The Baby Boom Generation and How They Grew", Chance: A Magazine of the American Statistical Association, Winter 1994.
- ^ Gregg Easterbrook. Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity, UWMC.edu, reprint from "The Atlantic Monthly", January 1997, no indication of permission given.
- ^ Erlich, Paul. "Eco-Catastrophe!". Ramparts, Sept 1969, pages 24–28.
- ^ Hartmann, Betsey. "Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control", Joanna Cotler Books, 1987
- ^ Paul Ehrlich, famed ecologist, answers readers' questions, August 13, 2004, Grist Magazine