Paul Ehrlich

Population Doomster and False Prophet of Ecological Apocalypse Paul Ehrlich Has Died

The author of The Population Bomb was never right but never in doubt that the world was about to end.

Ronald Bailey | 3.16.2026 4:30 PM

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Paul Ehrlich, the leading false prophet of inevitable environmental doom and author of the infamous The Population Bomb, has died at age 93. Why infamous? Consider the prologue to the 1968 edition:

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….We can no longer afford to merely treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the cancer itself must be cut out.

His solution? "We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail," he argued.

Instead of a population collapse due to mass starvation, the world population grew from 3.5 billion in 1968 to 8.3 billion today. Instead of a substantial increase in the world death rate, it fell from 12 per 1,000 people in 1968 to 8 per 1,000 people in 2023. Farmers........

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