Responses to predictions During the 1960s and 70s when Ehrlich made his most alarming warnings, there was a widespread belief among experts that population growth presented an extremely serious threat to the future of human civilization, although differences existed regarding the severity of the situation, and how to decrease it. In the decades since, critics have disputed Ehrlich's main thesis about overpopulation and its effects on the environment and human society, and his solutions, as well as his specific predictions made since the late 1960s. since 1961.A common criticism is that Ehrlich's predictions routinely failed to come true; for instance,
Ronald Bailey of
Reason magazine has termed him an "irrepressible doomster ... who, as far as I can tell, has never been right in any of his forecasts of imminent catastrophe." In a 1971 speech, he predicted that: "By the year 2000 the
United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people." "If I were a gambler," Professor Ehrlich concluded before boarding an airplane, "I would take even money that
England will not exist in the year 2000." This position was later criticized, as India's food production subsequently skyrocketed through the
Green Revolution in India, and its per capita caloric intake rose significantly in the following decades, even as its population doubled. since the 1960s and a slowing of
population growth have, within the current context of continued depletion of
non-renewable resources, averted the scale of food shortage,
famine and catastrophe foretold by the Ehrlichs. Canadian journalist
Dan Gardner, in his 2010 book
Future Babble, argues that Ehrlich has been insufficiently forthright in acknowledging errors he made, while being intellectually dishonest or evasive in taking credit for things he claims he got "right". For example, he rarely acknowledges the mistakes he made in predicting material shortages, massive death tolls from starvation (as many as one billion in the publication
Age of Affluence) or regarding the disastrous effects on specific countries. Meanwhile, he is happy to claim credit for "predicting" the increase of
AIDS or global warming. Gardner has criticized Ehrlich for endorsing the strategies proposed by William and Paul Paddock in their book
Famine 1975!. They had proposed a system of "triage" that would end food aid to "hopeless" countries such as India and Egypt. In
Population Bomb, Ehrlich suggests that "there is no rational choice except to adopt some form of the Paddocks' strategy as far as food distribution is concerned." Had this strategy been implemented for countries such as India and Egypt, which were reliant on food aid at that time, they would almost certainly have suffered famines. Ehrlich denies any type of racism, and has argued that if his policy ideas were implemented properly they would not be repressive. In a 2018 interview with
The Guardian, Ehrlich, while still proud of
The Population Bomb for starting a worldwide debate on the issues of population, acknowledged weaknesses of the book including not placing enough emphasis on
overconsumption and
inequality, and countering accusations of racism. He argues "too many rich people in the world is a major threat to the human future, and cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources." He advocated for an "unprecedented redistribution of wealth" in order to mitigate the problem of overconsumption of resources by the world's wealthy, but said "the rich who now run the global system — that hold the annual 'world destroyer' meetings in Davos — are unlikely to let it happen." Ehrlich and his colleague
Rodolfo Dirzo argued in a 2022 perspective paper for the need to reduce fertility rates among "the overconsuming wealthy and middle classes", and wasteful consumption in general, with the ultimate goal being to reduce "the scale of the human enterprise" in order to mitigate the contemporary extinction crisis.
Simon–Ehrlich wager The economist
Julian Simon argued in 1980 that overpopulation is not a problem as such and that humanity will adapt to changing conditions. Simon argued that eventually human creativity will improve living standards, and that most resources were replaceable. Simon stated that over hundreds of years, the prices of virtually all commodities had decreased significantly and persistently. Ehrlich termed Simon the proponent of a "space-age cargo cult" of economists convinced that human creativity and ingenuity would create substitutes for scarce resources and reasserted the idea that population growth was outstripping the Earth's supplies of food, fresh water and minerals. Ehrlich was allowed to choose ten commodities that he predicted would become scarce and thus increase in price. Ehrlich chose mostly metals, and lost the bet, as their average price decreased by about 30% in the next 10 years. Simon and Ehrlich could not agree about the terms of a second bet.
Ehrlich's response to critics Consistent with Norman Borlaug's Nobel Prize
speech, Ehrlich argued that humanity has simply deferred the disaster by the use of more intensive agricultural techniques, such as those introduced during the
Green Revolution. Ehrlich claimed that increasing populations and affluence are increasingly stressing the global environment, due to such factors as
loss of biodiversity,
overfishing,
global warming,
urbanization, chemical pollution and competition for raw materials. He maintained that due to growing global incomes, reducing consumption and human population is critical to protecting the environment and maintaining living standards, and that current rates of growth are still too great for a sustainable future. ==Other activities==