“I was Gullible and Stupid”
Whenever Paul Ehrlich comes up, this letter comes to mind.
I don’t like celebrating anyone’s death. But Ehrlich’s legacy should be remembered for what it is: apocalyptic environmental predictions that helped legitimize coercive sterilization and ruin countless lives. Horrific.
When talking about Ehrlich today, spare a moment to note that he set the template that the modern environmentalist movement still uses: apocalyptic forecasts that don’t bear out, but which lead countless people to make disastrously bad personal & public-policy decisions.
This explains a lot.
Paul Ehrlich has died. He was 93. He is survived by 8,300,678,394 people (134% increase from 1968), with a daily worldwide average calorie intake of 2,800 kcal (a 22% increase).
It’s cold comfort, but Emde was hardly alone in deferring to Ehrlich’s supposed expertise. The longtime professor of biology at Stanford University and advocate of an apocalyptic theory of human overpopulation, who passed away on Friday at the age of …
