SIMMONS SAYS: It’s so different when athletes play for country instead of club

Why Morgan Rielly won't play against Ottawa on Saturday night

Maple Leafs' Anthony Stolarz hit in throat in warmup, taken to Ottawa hospital

Edmonton-born man in U.S. ICE detention faces deportation

Share this Story : Toronto Sun Copy Link Email X Reddit Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr

JONAH GOLDBERG: Paul Ehrlich was wrong about everything

It's difficult to exaggerate the grip the biogist and author and his followers had on elite opinion and the popular imagination.

You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.

Biologist and author Paul Ehrlich, the most influential Chicken Little of the last century, died earlier this month at the age of 93. His 1968 book, The Population Bomb, launched decades of institutional panic in government, entertainment and journalism.

Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.

Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.

Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.

Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.

Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.

Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.

Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.

Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account.

Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on.

Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists.

Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists.

Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

Access articles from across Canada with one account.

Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.

Enjoy additional articles per month.

Get email updates from your favourite authors.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

Access articles from across Canada with one account

Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments

Enjoy additional articles per month

Get email updates from your favourite authors

Don't have an account? Create Account

Ehrlich’s core neo-Malthusian argument was that overpopulation would exhaust the supply of food and natural resources, leading to a cascade of catastrophes around the world. The Population Bomb opens with a bold prediction, “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.”

JONAH GOLDBERG: Paul Ehrlich was wrong about everything Back to video

“If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000,” Ehrlich prophesized during a speech in 1971. He also said that the U.S. would be rationing water by 1974, and food by 1980. That smog in L.A. and New York would cause some 200,000 deaths per year. That Americans born after the Second World War wouldn’t live past 50.

Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond.

There was an error, please provide a valid email address.

By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of Your Midday Sun will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

Interested in more newsletters? Browse here.

It’s difficult to exaggerate the grip Ehrlich and his followers had on elite opinion and the popular imagination. A founder of Zero Population Growth (now Population Connection), Ehrlich inspired the modern population control movement.

As Charles Mann chronicled in Smithsonian magazine, Ehrlich inspired global efforts to push abortion, birth control and even sterilization by governments, the United Nations and other international organizations, and foundations. “The results were horrific,” Betsy Hartmann, author of Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, told Mann.

“Some population-control programs pressured women to use only certain officially mandated contraceptives,” Mann writes. “In Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan, health workers’ salaries were, in a system that invited abuse, dictated by the number of IUDs they inserted into women. In the Philippines, birth-control pills were literally pitched out of helicopters hovering over remote villages. Millions of people were sterilized, often coercively, sometimes illegally, frequently in unsafe conditions, in Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Indonesia and Bangladesh.”

In the U.S., the Ehrlicheans talked about requiring licenses for babies and putting birth control in the (dwindling) water supply.

Earlier, I said it’s difficult to exaggerate the grip Ehrlich’s thesis “had” on elite opinion. The truth, however, is that the grip endures. The sub-headline of the New York Times‘ obituary reads, “His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement. But he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature.”

England still exists. Life expectancy in the U.S. just set a record high of 79 (in Europe it’s 81.5 ). There is no country in the world with a life expectancy under 50. Air and water quality are much better today than they were in 1968. Global food production has exploded. Famine is rare, and almost always a product of war or the backward command-and-control economic thinking Ehrlich supported. And fertility rates are worrisomely declining throughout the developed world, and far beyond. Slightly more than half the world’s nations have sub-replacement birthrates. We have not run out of any resources and America has more forests than it did a century ago.

So, which predictions were “premature,” exactly?

There’s something about Malthusian dread that is simply too seductive to shake. For instance, a few years ago, I noticed something weird. On the 50th anniversary of “Soylent Green,” a dystopian, Ehrlichean film about overpopulation and food shortages, a number of writers opined how “prescient” the movie was. No less than the normally reasonable magazine the Economist wrote, “It is impossible to watch the film today without weighing up how accurate its predictions turned out to be.” It’s an “eerie prophecy,” they declared.

Really? It’s “impossible to watch” a movie about mass state-sponsored euthanasia that turns human beings into high-protein crackers to fend off starvation — set in 2022! — without marveling at the accuracy of its predictions?

JONAH GOLDBERG: Republicans aren't willing to call war in Iran what it is

GOLDBERG: Trump needs to get ready for the blowback

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is not that Ehrlich turned out to be so wildly wrong, but that he was so obviously wrong from the beginning. My old boss Ben Wattenberg battled Ehrlich throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His feud began with a 1970 article for the New Republic titled, The Nonsense Explosion, in which Wattenberg explained that even as Ehrlich was writing about soaring birthrates, birthrates were already declining.

Ehrlich’s defenders — and they are legion — argue that he was a true prophet in that prophets issue apocalyptic warnings that, if heeded, can be avoided. This is more nonsense. He said mass “die-offs” were unavoidable with even the best policies, and the anti-growth fads he supported largely made things worse.

Simply put, his pessimism was too big to fail.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.

Share this Story : Toronto Sun Copy Link Email X Reddit Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.

SIMMONS SAYS: It’s so different when athletes play for country instead of club Sports

SIMMONS SAYS: It’s so different when athletes play for country instead of club

SUNshine Girl Vicky Sunshine Girls

Why Morgan Rielly won't play against Ottawa on Saturday night Toronto Maple Leafs

Why Morgan Rielly won't play against Ottawa on Saturday night

Maple Leafs' Anthony Stolarz hit in throat in warmup, taken to Ottawa hospital Toronto Maple Leafs

Maple Leafs' Anthony Stolarz hit in throat in warmup, taken to Ottawa hospital

Kidney disease is Toronto’s fastest-growing chronic condition — here’s how to prevent it Toronto & GTA

Kidney disease is Toronto’s fastest-growing chronic condition — here’s how to prevent it

© Toronto Sun