Editing The Population Bomb (section)

==Criticisms==

===Restatement of Malthusian theory===
The ''Population Bomb'' has been characterized by critics as primarily a repetition of the [[Malthusian catastrophe]] argument that population growth will outpace agricultural growth unless controlled. Ehrlich observed that since about 1930 the population of the world had doubled within a single generation, from 2 billion to nearly 4 billion, and was on track to do so again.  He assumed that available resources on the other hand, and in particular food, were nearly at their limits. Some critics compare Ehrlich unfavorably to Malthus, saying that although [[Thomas Malthus]] did not make a firm prediction of imminent catastrophe, Ehrlich warned of a potential massive disaster within the next decade or two. In addition, critics state that unlike Malthus, Ehrlich did not see any means of avoiding the disaster entirely (although some mitigation was possible), and proposed solutions that were much more radical than those discussed by Malthus, such as starving whole countries that refused to implement [[population control]] measures.<ref>{{cite book|title=Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway |author=Dan Gardner|publisher=McClelland and Stewart|year=2010|location=Toronto|pages=247–48|quote=William and Paul Paddoc, authors of ''Famine 1975!'', advocated a policy they called "triage": Rich nations should send all their food aid to those poor countries that still had some hope of one day feeding themselves; hopeless countries like India and Egypt should be cut off immediately.... The Paddocks knew countries that lost the aid would plunge into famine... In ''The Population Bomb'', Paul Ehrlich lavishly praised ''Famine 1975!'' ... and declared that "there is no rational choice except to adopt some form of the Paddocks' strategy as far as food distribution is concerned." Even in 1968 it should have been clear that this was glib nonsense.}}</ref>

Ehrlich was certainly not unique in his neo-Malthusian predictions, and there was a widespread belief in the 1960s and 70s that increasingly catastrophic famines were on their way.<ref>{{cite book|title=Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway|author=Dan Gardner|publisher=McClelland and Stewart|year=2010|location=Toronto|pages=130–31|quote=In 1974, at a World Food Congress in Rome, delegates listened somberly to dire forecasts by the likes of Philip Handler, a nutritionist and president of the United States National Academy of Sciences, who concluded that the worst pessimists - the Paddocks and Paul Ehrlich = had been on the mark.}}</ref>

===Predictions<!--Linked from 'Antinatalism'-->===
The Ehrlichs made a number of specific predictions that did not come to pass, for which they have received criticism. They have acknowledged that some predictions were incorrect. However, they maintain that their general argument remains intact, that their predictions were merely illustrative, that their and others' warnings caused preventive action, or that many of their predictions may yet come true {{cross-reference|(see [[#Ehrlich's response|Ehrlich's response]] below)}}. Still other commentators have criticized the Ehrlichs' perceived inability to acknowledge mistakes, evasiveness, and refusal to alter their arguments in the face of contrary evidence.<ref>{{cite book|title=Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway|author=Dan Gardner|publisher= McClelland and Stewart|year=2010|location=Toronto}}</ref> In 2015 Ehrlich told [[Retro Report]], "I do not think my language was too apocalyptic in ''The Population Bomb.'' My language would be even more apocalyptic today."<ref>{{cite web |title=The Population Bomb? |url=http://www.retroreport.org/video/the-population-bomb/ |publisher=[[Retro Report]] |date=1 June 2015 |access-date=15 July 2015}}</ref> 

In ''The Population Bomb''{{'}}s opening lines the authors state that nothing can prevent famines in which hundreds of millions of people will die during the 1970s (amended to 1970s and 1980s in later editions), and that there would be "a substantial increase in the world death rate." Although many lives could be saved through dramatic action, it was already too late to prevent a substantial increase in the global [[death rate]]. However, in reality the global death rate has continued to decline substantially since then, from 13/1000 in 1965–74 to 10/1000 from 1985–1990. Meanwhile, the population of the world has more than doubled, while calories consumed/person have increased 24%. The UN does not keep official death-by-hunger statistics so it is hard to measure whether the "hundreds of millions of deaths" number is correct. Ehrlich himself suggested in 2009 that between 200-300 million had died of hunger since 1968. However, that is measured over 40 years rather than the ten to twenty foreseen in the book, so it can be seen as significantly fewer than predicted.<ref>{{cite book|title=Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway|author=Dan Gardner|publisher=McClelland and Stewart|year=2010|location=Toronto|pages=7–8, 229–31}}</ref>

Famine has not been eliminated, but its root cause has been political instability, not global food shortage.<ref>[http://www.fao.org/docrep/x4400e/x4400e11.htm "Food Security and Nutrition in the Last 50 Years"], ''FAO Corporate Document Repository'', publication date unavailable.<!--access date 2009-09-07--></ref> The Indian economist and [[Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences|Nobel Memorial Prize]] winner, [[Amartya Sen]], has argued that nations with democracy and a free press have virtually never suffered from extended famines.<ref>{{cite news|last=Massing|first=Michael|title=Does Democracy Avert Famine?|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/arts/does-democracy-avert-famine.html|access-date=28 December 2010|work=The New York Times|date=1 March 2003}}</ref> And while a 2010 UN report stated that 925 million of the world's population of nearly seven billion people were in a constant state of hunger,<ref>{{cite web|title=Hunger Stats|url=http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats|access-date=28 December 2010}}</ref> it also notes that the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since the Ehrlichs published ''The Population Bomb.''<ref>{{cite web|title=Proportion of undernourished people in developing countries, 1969–71 to 2010|url=http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/al390e/al390e00.pdf|access-date=5 March 2011}}</ref>

The Ehrlichs write: "I don't see how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."<ref name="Population Bomb"/> This view was widely held at the time, as another statement of his, later in the book: "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." In the book's 1971 edition, the latter prediction was removed, as the food situation in India suddenly improved {{Cross reference|(see [[Green Revolution in India]]).}}

As of 2010, India had almost 1.2 billion people, having nearly tripled its population from around 400 million in 1960, with a total fertility rate in 2008 of 2.6.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.indianexpress.com/news/total-fertility-rate-in-india-on-decline/722989/|title=Total Fertility Rate in India on decline|date=10 December 2010}}</ref> While the absolute numbers of malnourished children in India is high,<ref name=":3">{{cite news|url= https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/world/asia/13malnutrition.html|work=The New York Times|first=Somini|last=Sengupta|title=As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists|date=13 March 2009}}</ref> the rates of malnutrition and poverty in India have declined from approximately 90% at the time of India's independence (1947), to less than 40% in 2010 {{cross-reference|(see [[Malnutrition in India]])}}. Ehrlich's prediction about famines did not come to pass, although food security is still an issue in India. However, most epidemiologists, public health physicians and demographers identify corruption as the chief cause of malnutrition, not "overpopulation".<ref name=":3" /> As economist and philosopher Amartya Sen noted, India frequently had famines during British colonial rule. However, since India became a democracy, there have been no recorded famines.<ref>{{cite magazine|url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989405,00.html|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070216115449/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989405,00.html|url-status= dead|archive-date= February 16, 2007|magazine=Time|first=Jeffrey|last=Sachs|title=The Real Causes of Famine |date=26 October 1998}}</ref>

Journalist Dan Gardner has criticized Ehrlich both for his overconfident predictions and his refusal to acknowledge his errors. "In two lengthy interviews, Ehrlich admitted making not a single major error in the popular works he published in the late 1960s and early 1970s … the only flat-out mistake Ehrlich acknowledges is missing the destruction of the rain forests, which happens to be a point that supports and strengthens his world view—and is therefore, in [[cognitive dissonance]] terms, not a mistake at all. Beyond that, he was by his account, off a little here and there, but only because the information he got from others was wrong. Basically, he was right across the board."<ref>{{cite book|title=Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway|author=Dan Gardner|publisher=McClelland and Stewart|year=2010|location=Toronto|page=230}}</ref>

[[Jonathan V. Last|Jonathan Last]] called it "one of the most spectacularly foolish books ever published".<ref>[[Jonathan V. Last|Last JV]] (2013) ''What to expect when no one's expecting'', [[Encounter Books]], New York, pp 7.</ref>

=== Persistence of trends ===
Economist [[Julian Simon]] and medical statistician [[Hans Rosling]] pointed out that the failed prediction of 70s famines were based exclusively on the assumption that exponential population growth will continue indefinitely and no technological or social progress will be made.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Famine 1995? Or 2025? Or 1975?|url=http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR05.txt}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Do Humans Breed Like Flies? Or Like Norwegian Rats?|url=http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR24.txt}}</ref> In [[The Ultimate Resource]] Simon argued that resources, such as metals, which Ehrlichs extensively discuss in their books as examples of non-sustainable resources, are valued exclusively for the function they provide, and technological progress frequently replaces these: for example, [[copper]] was largely replaced by [[Optical fiber|fiber optic]] in communications, and [[Carbon fiber reinforced polymer|carbon fiber]] replaced a wide range of alloys and steel in construction {{Cross-reference|(see [[Simon-Ehrlich wager]] and [[The Ultimate Resource]])}}.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Amazing Theory of Raw-Material Scarcity|url=http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAQ01A.txt}}</ref> Simon also argued that technological progress tends to happen in large steps rather than linear growth, as happened with the [[Green Revolution|Green revolution]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Ultimate Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment|url=http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/|website=www.juliansimon.com|access-date=2020-05-17}}</ref>
Hans Rosling in his book ''[[Factfulness]]'' demonstrated that fertility rate has significantly decreased worldwide and, more importantly, high fertility is a natural response to high mortality in low-income countries and once they enter higher income group, fertility drops quickly {{Cross-reference|(see [[Factfulness]])}}. According to environmentalist [[Stewart Brand]], himself a student and friend of Ehrlich, the assumption made by the latter and by authors of [[The Limits to Growth]] has been "proven wrong since 1963" when the demographic trends worldwide have visibly changed.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Brand|first=Stewart|title=Whole Earth Discipline|year=2010|publisher=Atlantic |isbn=978-1843548164|quote=The theory’s Malthusian premise has been proven wrong since 1963, when the rate of population growth reached a frightening 2 percent a year but then began dropping. The 1963 inflection point showed that the imagined soaring J-curve of human increase was instead a normal S-curve. The growth rate was leveling off. No one thought the growth rate might go negative and the population start shrinking in this century without an overshoot and crash, but that is what is happening.}}</ref>

===Showmanship===
One frequent criticism of ''The Population Bomb'' is that it focused on spectacle and exaggeration at the expense of accuracy. Pierre Desrochers and Christine Hoffbauer remark that "at the time of writing ''The Population Bomb'', Paul and Anne Ehrlich should have been more cautious and revised their tone and rhetoric, in light of the undeniable and already apparent errors and shortcomings of Osborn and Vogt’s analyses."<ref name="intellectual roots"/> Charles Rubin has written that it was precisely because Ehrlich was largely unoriginal and wrote in a clear emotionally gripping style that it became so popular. He quotes a review from ''[[Natural History (magazine)|Natural History]]'' noting that Ehrlich does not try to "convince intellectually by mind dulling statistics," but rather roars "like an [[Old Testament]] Prophet."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8um4nNXG1i0C&pg=PA79 |author=Charles T. Rubin |year=1994 |title=The green crusade:rethinking the roots of environmentalism |page=79 |publisher=Rowman and Littlefield |location=Oxford |isbn=9780847688173 }}</ref>  Gardner says, "as much as the events and culture of the era, Paul Ehrlich's style explain the enormous audience he attracted." Indeed, an appearance on ''[[The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson]]'' helped to propel the success of the book, as well as Ehrlich's celebrity.<ref>{{cite book |title=Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway |author=Dan Gardner |publisher=McClelland and Stewart |year=2010 |location=Toronto |page=164}}</ref> Desrochers and Hoffbauer go on to conclude that it seems hard to deny that using an alarmist tone and emotional appeal were the main lessons that the present generation of environmentalists learned from Ehrlich's success.

===Social and political coercion===
On the [[political left]] the book received criticism that it was focusing on "the wrong problem", and that the real issue was one of distribution of resources rather than of overpopulation.<ref name=":1" /> Marxists worried that Paul and Anne Ehrlich's work could be used to justify genocide and imperial control, as well as oppression of minorities and disadvantaged groups or even a return to [[eugenics]].<ref>See for example: {{cite book|title=Marx and Engels on the Population Bomb|editor=Ronald L. Meek|publisher=The Ramparts Press|url=http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/literary/96/population.html|year=1973|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000521124318/http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/literary/96/population.html|archive-date=2000-05-21}}</ref> 

Eco-socialist [[Barry Commoner]] argued that the Ehrlichs were too focused on overpopulation as the source of environmental problems, and that their proposed solutions were politically unacceptable because of the coercion that they implied, and because the cost would fall disproportionately on the poor. He argued that technological, and above all social development would lead to a natural decrease in both population growth and environmental damage.<ref>{{cite journal|journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists|author=Barry Commoner|date=May 1972|title=A Bulletin Dialogue: on "The Closing Circle" - Response|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pwsAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA17|pages=17–56|quote=Population control (as distinct from voluntary, self-initiated control of fertility), no matter how disguised, involves some measure of political repression, and would burden the poor nations with the social cost of a situation—overpopulation—which is the current outcome of their previous exploitation, as colonies, by the wealthy nations.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Brand|first=Stewart|title=Whole Earth Discipline|year=2010|publisher=Atlantic |isbn=978-1843548164|quote="I was for Ehrlich and against the ecosocialist Commoner. But Ehrlich’s predicted famines never came, thanks largely to the [[green revolution]] in agriculture, nor did the need for harsh government programs. Instead, Commoner’s thesis of demographic transition turned out to be mostly right."}}</ref> Commoner engaged in a fierce debate with Ehrlich at an environmental United Nations convention in Stockholm:

{{Quote|text=A feud about how to deal with overpopulation surfaced in Stockholm, between Ehrlich and his nemesis, Barry Commoner, whose popular book, The Closing Circle (1971), directly criticized Ehrlich’s population-bomb thesis. Both were on panels in Stockholm, with Commoner slyly planting invidious questions aimed at Ehrlich among various Third World participants in the conference, and Ehrlich yelling back. Commoner’s argument was that population policies weren’t needed, because what was called “the demographic transition” would take care of everything—all you had to do was help poor people get less poor, and they would have fewer children. Ehrlich insisted that the situation was way too serious for that approach, and it wouldn’t work anyway: You needed harsh government programs to drive down the birthrate. The alternative was overwhelming famines and massive damage to the environment.|author=[[Stewart Brand]]|title=|source=[[Whole Earth Discipline]], 2010}}