I remember sitting in a stiff wooden chair back in late elementary school, watching a filmstrip that warned us the world was running out of time. The predictions were grim: Africa and India would inevitably collapse under the weight of famine, and the United States would face food riots by 1985. It was presented as “settled science,” a phrase that feels chillingly familiar today, and it convinced a generation that our existence was an encroaching catastrophe. I can still smell the faint, ozone-heavy scent of the projector bulb burning hot in that dimly lit room.
Dr. Paul Ehrlich, the man who codified this anxiety in his blockbuster book “The Population Bomb,” passed away this past week. He was a titan of Malthusian thought, and for many of us growing up in the shadow of his influence, his name became synonymous with the feeling that the end was near. Looking back, it is hard to reconcile the panicked tone of the era with the reality we inhabit now, where the struggle for many, in a bizarre reversal, is actually managing the health impacts of surplus rather than starvation.
But here’s the thing about certainty: it often blinds us to the messy, adaptable nature of humanity. Ehrlich didn’t just suggest we were running out of resources; he advocated for policies that remain deeply unsettling when viewed through a modern lens. From lobbying for TV shows to portray large families as social pariahs to musing about the forced sterilization of populations, his vision of sustainability lacked any real faith in human ingenuity. As noted by Misryoum, he wasn’t just a theorist; he was an architect of a philosophy that prioritized control over people.
Oddly enough, the market proved him wrong in the most mundane way imaginable. In 1980, economist Julian Simon challenged Ehrlich to a bet on the price of five specific metals, banking on the idea that human innovation would make these resources cheaper, not scarcer, over a decade. By 1990, the mail brought a check from Ehrlich for $576.07. No note, just the proof that his “inevitable” scarcity hadn’t arrived.
It didn’t stop him, though. Even as the decades rolled on and his catastrophic predictions failed to manifest, Ehrlich kept pushing the same narrative, eventually pivotting toward modern climate movements.
He was wrong about the bomb, but the echo of his alarmism still rings in our classrooms. It is a reminder that we should perhaps be a bit more skeptical when someone insists that the future is already written in stone (and that we need a central authority to save us from it).