Paul Ehrlich: Prophet of doom

By Richard D. Land, Christian Post Executive Editor Friday, March 20, 2026

Last week, Paul Ehrlich, the well-known Stanford biologist, environmentalist and controversial demographer, died at the age of 93.

Ehrlich, the “Chicken Little” of the last third of the 20th century, proclaimed loudly from his book, The Population Bomb (1968), that “the sky is falling,” and the world faced famine and millions of deaths from catastrophes caused by overpopulation in the near future.

In what soon proved to be a wildly overblown and misinterpreted statistical analysis, Ehrlich’s 1968, 233-page book argued that the population apocalypse was soon to be upon us. Arguing that the “stork passed the plow,” Ehrlich predicted food riots in the U.S. and truly apocalyptic, lethal famines in Africa and Asia.

Ehrlich’s Population Bomb sold 3 million copies. I was a senior in college at the time and Ehrlich’s book was a sensation on college campuses. The first four or five years of the Baby Boom (78 million babies born between 1946-1964) were undergraduates in 1968, and Ehrlich was labeling them as being part of this overpopulation bomb that was overwhelming the Earth’s limited resources.

Ehrlich’s dire warnings about overpopulation and encouragement for “boomers” to have fewer children helped convince some boomers (according to their own testimonies), along with the introduction of the birth control pill in 1964, to do just that. The result was the “Baby Bust” generation.

Ehrlich followed up with a second blockbuster, The End of Affluence (1974), which he co-wrote with his wife, Anne Ehrlich. In this book, he predicted that by 1985, mankind would enter a “genuine age of scarcity.”

Chillingly, Ehrlich wrote, “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” He advocated widespread sterilization in places like India and urged Western nations to restrict food aid to the Third World.

In fact, Ehrlich failed radically in his estimation of how agricultural science would be able to expand the world’s food supply substantially. For example, within 10 years, India had increased its food supply enough to not only feed its own people but to begin to export wheat to other countries. As Matt Ridley pointed out in his book The Rational Optimist,

“Since 1900 the world has increased its population by 400 percent, its cropland area by 30 percent, its average yields by 400 percent, and its total crop harvest by 600 percent….so, per capita, food production has risen by 50 percent.” — Quoted by Jason L. Riley, “Paul Ehrlich Was Always Wrong, Never in Doubt,” The Wall Street Journal)

In the United States, food and energy are less costly than they were a half-century ago, and obesity is a greater danger to the general American population than hunger.

Ehrlich went on to predict disaster for humanity’s future and, as late as 2018, predicted uncontrolled population growth and economic development would lead to decline and collapse in a few decades!

So why, in spite of being so spectacularly and regularly wrong, did Ehrlich remain an icon and hero on the left? Ehrlich, like many of his ideological caste, perceived human beings as a threat to the environment. They perceive human beings as damaging nature. Ehrlich and his compatriots see human beings as parasites damaging the environment.

In fact, human beings possess one mouth with which to consume. However, they also possess two eyes, two arms, two legs, and two hands, and most importantly, a mind with which to think, invent and to produce, which means human productivity trumps liberal prejudices about ravaging the environment.

Each human being, created in God’s image, is a resource for human productivity and flourishing, not a threat to survival. God distributes human talent equally among the human family. We should all be doing all we can to make certain that every human child is exposed to the opportunity to be educated and challenged to use his or her productivity to increase his or her own family’s flourishing, as well as that of all humankind.

We should always remember what people like Ehrlich never knew, that God created the creation for humankind. Genesis 2:15 tells us that God put Adam in the Garden of Eden “to dress it and keep it.” To “keep” it means to guard and protect it. To “dress” it means to cultivate it and to cause it to bring forth its fruit for human betterment and blessing. Human beings are not the Earth’s adversary. We are its developer and protector under God’s direction.