The news broke last week that the famous 1960s biologist and apocalypse fearmonger Paul Ehrlich had shuffled off this mortal coil. I've written about Ehrlich many times over the years, but didn't feel particularly moved to write something about him. Frankly, people who make predictions about the future and are wrong far more often than right don't interest me much.
Just for fun, I looked up every post I've done that mentioned Ehrlich, and this 2018 post about his most famous book, "The Population Bomb," came out on top.
First published in May of 1968, I was 14, I recall it being talked about widely and seriously. It was by a scientist after all. The Stanford University biology professor famously claimed that population growth would result in resource depletion and the starvation of hundreds of millions of people. I recall conversations about "hamburger wars" as people fought to the death for dwindling supplies of food.
Ehrlich prophesied that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s (and that 65 million of them would be Americans), that already-overpopulated India was doomed, and that most probably “England will not exist in the year 2000.”Doomsday prophesy sells, and doomsday from someone with a handful of letters after their name (MS, PhD etc.) sells even better. The future didn't turn out quite as dismally as Ehrlich suggested; he famously lost a bet where he picked a "basket of commodities" and bet that these five metals would go up in price in 10 years (1980 to 1990) - they declined in price an average of 57.6% while the population increased. Nevertheless, he influenced a generation or two of policy makers.
In conclusion, Ehrlich warned that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come,” meaning “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”
And that's the basic problem with fearmongers like Ehrlich. It doesn't matter how many times people create demonstrations that argue against their predictions and the fearmonger's predictions don't materialize, they keep getting published. You can look up virtually every prediction he advanced and they don't come true. The first article I ever wrote about him was five years before that one, June 2013, about how many people could fit on Earth.
It starts with a simple idea. First off, I recall hearing around 25 or 30 years ago that the entire population of the world would fit in Jacksonville, Florida, without resorting to high rise apartments: just the square feet of Jacksonville divided by the number of people. It would be highly impractical, each person only gets about a 2' by 2' square, but did you ever think the entire population of the world would fit in a single American city?
That 2013 post has a graphic of how many states of the USA would be required to house the entire population of the world and goes one better by showing the number of states required for different population densities. It shows, for example, if we housed every single person on earth with the population density of Paris, they would fit into the area of three states: Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. If we used the population density of New York City, the entire population of Earth could fit into the area of Texas. Likewise if we used the more generous suburban spread of Houston, the whole population of the planet would fit in the middle states of America.
But none of that is the point of tonight's post.
By the time 1970 rolled around and I was in high school, one of my favorite bands was the Moody Blues, a progressive rock group that had been creating some big hits over the last few years of the '60s and on through the '70s. In 1968, a couple of members of the band wrote a song called Legend of a Mind about another popular figure of the late '60s/early '70s, Timothy Leary. That song is probably remembered by most people who heard it at the time using the song's refrain, "Timothy Leary's dead".
Legend of a MindThe Moody Blues
Timothy Leary's dead
No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in
Timothy Leary's dead
No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in
He'll fly his astral plane
Takes you trips around the bay
Brings you back the same day
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary's dead
No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in
Timothy Leary's dead
No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in
He'll fly his astral plane
Takes you trips around the bay
Brings you back the same day
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Along the coast you'll hear them boast
About a light they say that shines so clear
So raise your glass, we'll drink a toast
To the little man who sells you thrills along the pier
He'll take you up, he'll bring you down
He'll plant your feet back firmly on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low
He knows exactly which way he's gonna go
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
He'll take you up, he'll bring you down
He'll plant your feet back on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low
Timothy Leary
He'll fly his astral plane
He'll take you trips around the bay
He'll bring you back the same day
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Yesterday morning as I was waking up and getting up to start the day, this music was playing in my mind. And then my brain did something I never expected. It turned "Timothy Leary's dead" into "Little Paul Ehrlich's dead" which keeps the meter of the song and the number of syllables the same.
Now I just need to come up with a couple of lines for the other places:
Little Paul Ehrlich's dead
No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in
Little Paul Ehrlich's dead
No, no, no, no, he's outside, looking in
He'll fly his astral plane
Takes you trips around the bay
Brings you back the same day
Little Paul Ehrlich
Little Paul Ehrlich
Cover art for the Moody Blues "In Search of the Lost Chord" album, 1968. The source of the song Legend of a Mind.
He was so wrong even before the invention of dwarf wheat. What a schmuck.
ReplyDeleteAnd that lie that he pushed was right up there with 'DDT is killing all the bald eagles.' No, hunters and pest control shooters were killing all the bald eagles.
And now windmills are killing all the bald eagles.
DeleteThe sad thing is nobody asked him if butterflies have agency. An insect population has boom/bust cycles just like any predator/prey relationship. Humans have agency and can rapidly adapt to changing conditions.
ReplyDeleteThe question never asked is "Why do you think population trends for butterflies have any application to human population growth?"
Nobody in the Media asked those basic questions and we got stuck listening to that charlatan all these years.
Interesting idea Rick but when an insect species has a boom bust cycle aside from a few scientist who notices. So far, we don't notice that butterflies' parents stick around to raise their little butterflies. Indeed, they are dead before the eggs-pupa and emergence of a new butterfly occurs.
ReplyDeleteHuman "Agency" is that choice? Reactions to environmental situations?
What agency is involved if there is a simple lack of calories aka food to eat?
Paul's viewpoint was proven wrong for the timeframe were discussing. He didn't add in the massive irrigation programs, massive conversion of oil into fertilizer and so on. The "Green Revolution" of dwarf wheat Beans spoke about happened BUT it requires massive energy inputs.
Seems our little attack on Iran has put a serious crimp on those "massive energy inputs" aka oil, fertilizer and rare gases for odd stuff like microchip production.
Spring plantings are going on, and a major bit of the worlds Fertilizer is pretty much offline, and the production are being blasted into MULTI-Year rebuilding messes by a tit for tat attacks.
BTW even America is affected as our fertilizer plants are running at full capacity AND we still IMPORT fertilizer.
10-15%
Approximately 10-15% of the total global fertilizer consumption occurs in the United States, indicating that a significant portion of the country's fertilizer needs is met through imports. Specifically, the U.S. imports over 20% of its urea-based fertilizers from Canada, and imports account for 30% of ammonia and 55% of phosphate rock production. This highlights the reliance on imported fertilizers to meet domestic consumption needs.
Similar amounts of food are imported and that food will be affected by the little war situation. Yes, we CAN do without coffee, a lot of our beef, fresh fruits and veggies but those are calories that are removed from our diet.
In a few years of effort, we could replace that imported fertilizer but unless we do a oil, fertilizer and food lockdown they will be shipped away from America where the price is higher.
I'd suggest adding to your shelf stable supply of food as soon enough it's price will rise as even mere fuel costs for shipping come into play.
Aggh: Nostradamus wannabes, a pox on their collective house. I have memories of palm trees on Hudson Bay, oceans rise such that the Ozark mountains would be islands, Jim Jones and Al Gore. Now for my predictions. "We will never run out of nut jobs."
ReplyDelete