Today is Paul Ehrlich's 76th birthday, and like many people I'm glad that he, and the rest of us, lived to see this day just to prove him wrong. The author of The Population Bomb, Ehrlich famously predicted in December 1967, "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."
While famine did prove to be a problem, we experienced nowhere near the death totals predicted by Ehrlich. That's because the famines that were experienced were the result of politics, not overpopulation as he predicted. Fortunately we have been spared (for the most part) the horrific politics and population control desired by Ehrlich. Long may he live as a living monument to man's folly in predicting the end is near.
