POPULATION BOMB

Rating:
Summary: Population Bomb
Review: ...
When making predictions about the future it is almost impossible to get it right down to the year the prediction is going to occur. Take for example the book 1984 by George Orwell, his big brother predictions did not start coming true until at or around the middle 1990's.
I think if every one gives Ehrlich's predictions a research chance, they will see 70% of his predictions did come true, just not on the predicted year. And the other 30% could of not come true due to the fact if you come out with a report/book and it states for example: "Drainage Pollution from Pig Farms in the Midwest will contaminate all of the central united states drinking supply by the year 2010, don't you think the social thinking box will get on this problem and secure a better way to dispose the waste products that come from these type facilities.
I think every one should give this book a read! It was bold and ahead of its time when written. If you really don't think some of his predictions are going to come true, think about this, what if the computer network was unable to function. How would we get fuel, food, or even more important, money from our bank account to our ATM. Looking back on all societies before us there was a drastic increase in technology and then a crash. I think his book does a fine job of predicting what could happen if changes are not made, in the way we as a society consume.

Rating:
Summary: Chicken Little wrong again(as always)
Review: Ehrlich has made a 40 year career out of being flat out wrong.Every prediction in this book failed to come to pass.For some reason that is beyond me he manages to keep a good reputation,especially from radical environmentalist kooks and scientists who are greedy for grant money who will latch on to any alarmism in order to get those dollars rolling in.Ehrlich and Rifkin and the whole pantheon of the doom and gloom preachers are a discrace to science and deserve nothing but scorn for poisoning the public discourse and knowledge with their modern brand of apocalyptic thinking.But deep down a lot of people desire that an apocalypse is right around the corner.Whole religions have been founded on this type of thinking,like the hardcore environmentalist movement of present day America.Like all doom and gloomers Ehrlich will be forgotten 50 years from now,but of course a new generation of Chicken Littles will have arrived.

Rating:
Summary: The Right Wing Fascists and Corporate Apologists - Wrong Aga
Review: I am amazed. I read The Population Bomb in 1996, and thought it a great general warning. Previously I had thought The Limits of Growth a great piece of writing and prediction. So, rather than availing our selves collectively to figure our what the limits of expansion on this planet are, we have experienced the continued vicious assaults by the Republican Right, and their Right Wing Greek Chorus (i.e. Julian Simon, Peter Huber, etc.) decrying anyone interested in ecology and conservation, calling them (us) "eco-Nazis"); all financed by Scaife, Olin, Koch, Coors, Bradley, etc. and their 500 or so right wing "think tanks" which are inhabited by multitudes of so-called "fellows" (to add an academic touch to a group of addled messengers all "on message" in their attempt to discredit any and all who would look objectively at the environment and the limits to growth. They exist soley to provide talking points and heads to the O'Reilley's, Scarboroughs, and other TV nitwits involved in deluging the public in waves of deliberate lies and spin, such as to confuse nearly everyone - and then have it echo back into the very credible media that is left. I have not heard these congenital idiots address the Hubbert Peak of Oil Production in its emerging variations, which indicate that our increasing billions of people will quickly come to bad ends as suddenly the face of disappearing oil and gas leave us with an infrastructure which cannot use sufficient other energies and sources to continue to grow and distribute food enough for all -- even in the US. I propose that we take the so-called "right wing think tanks" off their tax benefits as non-profits -- in fact "right wing think tank" is an oxymoron, as is the thought of these roach motels posing as providing any benefit to the public at large worth such tax benefits to the corporations and their cretious and despicable foundations.

Meadows and Erlich may not have things precisely correct, but they are accurate within 15 degrees RMS over the longer term. And, certainly they are much more credible than the stables of jerks and jerkettes posing as academics and experts on the Right Wing. I recommend Erlich's books, as well as those on the evolution of Hubbert, to these fools, if in fact they can understand the presented facts and theories -- which I doubt
most seriously -- I mean Charles Murray, creationism, intelligent design -- yuck -get ready for the Rupture as it will come in the next few decades.

Rating:
Summary: The Right Wing Fascists and Corporate Apologists - Wrong Aga
Review: I am amazed. I read The Population Bomb in 1996, and thought it a great general warning. Previously I had thought The Limits of Growth a great piece of writing and prediction. So, rather than availing our selves collectively to figure our what the limits of expansion on this planet are, we have experienced the continued vicious assaults by the Republican Right, and their Right Wing Greek Chorus (i.e. Julian Simon, Peter Huber, etc.) decrying anyone interested in ecology and conservation, calling them (us) "eco-Nazis"); all financed by Scaife, Olin, Koch, Coors, Bradley, etc. and their 500 or so right wing "think tanks" which are inhabited by multitudes of so-called "fellows" (to add an academic touch to a group of addled messengers all "on message" in their attempt to discredit any and all who would look objectively at the environment and the limits to growth. They exist soley to provide talking points and heads to the O'Reilley's, Scarboroughs, and other TV nitwits involved in deluging the public in waves of deliberate lies and spin, such as to confuse nearly everyone - and then have it echo back into the very credible media that is left. I have not heard these congenital idiots address the Hubbert Peak of Oil Production in its emerging variations, which indicate that our increasing billions of people will quickly come to bad ends as suddenly the face of disappearing oil and gas leave us with an infrastructure which cannot use sufficient other energies and sources to continue to grow and distribute food enough for all -- even in the US. I propose that we take the so-called "right wing think tanks" off their tax benefits as non-profits -- in fact "right wing think tank" is an oxymoron, as is the thought of these roach motels posing as providing any benefit to the public at large worth such tax benefits to the corporations and their cretious and despicable foundations.

Meadows and Erlich may not have things precisely correct, but they are accurate within 15 degrees RMS over the longer term. And, certainly they are much more credible than the stables of jerks and jerkettes posing as academics and experts on the Right Wing. I recommend Erlich's books, as well as those on the evolution of Hubbert, to these fools, if in fact they can understand the presented facts and theories -- which I doubt
most seriously -- I mean Charles Murray, creationism, intelligent design -- yuck -get ready for the Rupture as it will come in the next few decades.

Rating:
Summary: Ehrlich fails to see that technology innovation isn't static
Review: In the predictable style of most misanthropic environmental doomsayers, Ehrlich conveniently forgets that humans are capable of confronting pressing problems with technological and social innovation, as though we're all doomed to live in the 1970s (or the present) forever. People who think Earth is about to be depleted of its resources might want to check out books like "Mining the Sky" by John Lewis. There are enough resources in space to support us for a long time. And yes I know we don't yet have the capability to get to them yet but there's no law of nature that says we can't eventually.

Rating:
Summary: It can't survive hindsight
Review: Paul Ehrlich begins the work that gave him instant notoriety (infamy) by saying: "I have understood the population explosion intellectually for a long time."

He spends the next 180 pages proving conclusively that such is not the case.

It isn't simply that his predictions turned out to be wrong in some of the particulars, but rather that they were so completely wrong that they will NEVER come to pass (though he unrepentantly continues to beat the same drum).

Ehrlich predicted that, by the end of the 20th century, human want would outstrip available resources; whole areas of human endeavor would screech to a halt due to resource scarcity; England would, in all likelihood, cease to exist; India would collapse due to its inability to feed itself; and "inevitable" mass starvation would sweep the globe (including the US). We were on the brink of disaster in 1968, and the future looked very, very dark. In fact, he asserts, "it is now too late to take action to save many of those people."

And yet none of these things have come to pass. Why? Because Ehrlich makes the same mistake that Malthus did: he confuses the concept of finite resources with the notion that they (and the demand for them) are fixed. This is the point that Ehrlich's detractors (most notably Julian Simon) have been making for decades.

Ehrlich did not foresee the technological innovations (the Green Revolution) that have been such a boon to mankind, or changes in both the supply and demand of various resources (such as those in his famous bet with Simon). But such changes were inevitable (far more than the catastrophe that he predicted). The entire history of human endeavor is adaptive. As resources become more scarce, their costs rise. As those costs rise, incentives are created to find alternatives or increase supply or decrease demand. Thus, assuming that either resource availability and/or per capita demand is fixed is not merely an oversight - it is inexcusably poor science.

This is also why claims that "The Population Bomb" was some sort of self-correcting prophecy - that by drawing attention to the problem, disaster was averted - hold no water. This fallacy is based on the assumption that long-term concerns about population growth are somehow more pressing than current hunger problems. Norman Borlaug (one of many involved in the Green Revolution) would have a good laugh about that one. Unfortunately, the major cause of hunger in the world today (in countries like Ethiopia) is not resource scarcity, but political realities (despots) that prevent access to food.

One last point to Ehrlich's defenders: much has been made about cancer rates (and Simon's purported unwillingness to bet on them). But a rise in cancer incidence was to be expected, not because of pollutants or chemicals or environmental degradations, but because cancer is primarily a disease of the aged. The population "explosion" did not occur because more children were/are being born (the opposite is true), but that children were/are no longer "dropping like flies." The average age of the population has risen markedly and so, of course, has the incidence of age related diseases.

My favorite example of Ehrlich-speak: "Enough of fantasy.... Just remember that, at the current growth rate, in a few thousand years everything in the visible universe would be converted into people, and the ball of people would be expanding at the speed of light."

I'm SO glad he'd had "enough of fantasy."

Rating:
Summary: Racism vs. Facts and Logic
Review: Since this book's first publication, it has been a touchstone for those who are terrified that the darkies will take over the earth, but who lack the courage to admit their race hatred openly.

Throughout human history, the norm was a high birth rate, a high death rate, and a nearly static population. Then, in the 18th century death rates started to come down -- in Europe. There followed a population explosion -- among whites.

Somehow, this failed to worry white people. Instead, they used their wealth and numbers to conquer the world. Everything was fine by them till about 1946, when the non-whites began booting out the conquerers, and those pesky colored babies stopped dying at the rates they had in the past.

VOILA, a population explosion was discovered. 'Human Beings' were present in far to great numbers, and catastrophe was just around the next corner, unless drastic steps were taken to stop population growth among the dusky ... well, the corner after that. Or maybe the corner six blocks down. Or somewhen.

THE POPULATION BOMB is the best known of these false projections. ...it displayed on its cover the ridiculous assertion that "In the time it takes you to read these sentences, four people will die of starvation. Three of them children." But if you're scared of the brown peril, you don't bother to time how long it takes to read that, then compare the figures and find out it wasn't true.

If you want a text book in how NOT to think about population trends, or how to frighten the gullible, or how some people will cling to their beliefs despite every piece of evidence, by all means buy a used paperback somewhere.

If you want to know something about population trends in the real world, forget it. ...

Rating:
Summary: I did not like this book.
Review: The theories behind "The Population Bomb" have been repeatedly and overwhelmingly proven wrong by real world experience. There is an extreme amount of evidence to prove Ehrlich wrong. Neverthless, many of those on the left-wing of the political spectrum continue to believe him.

If anything, the world is headed for a problem of *under* population. Current models predict that during the mid 21st century, the world's population will stop growing, and start to shrink. And already today, right now, the birthrates of many countries are already less than the 2.1 births per woman that is necessary to maintain a stable population size.

I see that a number of people have recommended Julian Simon's wonderful book. That is indeed a good read. I would also like to suggest reading Ronald Bailey's book "Earth Report 2000" which you can order right here at amazon.com

As time goes on, the doomsayers such as Ehrlich are being discredited, and those who believe in free market environmentalism, such as Simon and Bailey, are getting more and more attention. And that's exactly as it should be.

Rating:
Summary: Once a knucklehead, always a knucklehead
Review: There seems to be something in people that always wants to look on the bad side of things, even if the bad side of things doesn't exist. Why, I don't know, but it has allowed the author to make a 40-year career of being wrong on EVERYTHING, and yet he's still taken seriously by some people. If I was to scream that 2+2=5 all my life, I would be dismissed as a nut. Yet the author is doing exactly the same thing...and is not dismissed as a nut. Go figure. This is a ridiculous book. Read it for humor, and then goggle at how seriously the author takes himself. What a twit.

Rating:
Summary: Should be in the fiction-horror section
Review: Well, I am not financed by any right wing think tank (but if there's a think tank out there that wants to finance me--right or left--, give me a call!), but forty years ago Ehrlich was predicting massive global starvation in the 1990's. Well, I went throught the 90's and I don't really recall that. If you're looking for a scary but fictional story, read Steven King...or Paul Ehrlich I guess. But let's not pretend that this has anything to do with reality.