Paul Ehrlich is a biologist, environmental activist, and population control advocate. He is the author of a number of books supporting population control policies, including The Population Bomb (1968).

Ehrlich was a founding member of  Population Connection (then called Zero Population Growth), a left-wing organization created to reduce population growth in the name of environmentalism. He has held a number of positions on the boards and councils of environmentalist organizations like Common Cause, Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth, and has received a number of awards from environmentalist groups, scientific organizations, and even the UN. ¹

In 1970, Ehrlich said, “Sometime in the next fifteen years, the end will come. And by ‘the end’ I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.” ² In March 2018, Ehrlich warned that civilization’s collapse in the next few decades is a “near certainty.” ³

Political Views

Alarmist Predictions

In a 1969 New York Times article, Ehrlich was quoted saying that “[t]he trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years. The situation is going to get continually worse unless we change our behavior.” Writer Robert Reinhold describes Ehrlich as “representative” of a “new breed” of scientists willing to get more involved in sociopolitical activism.⁴

In a 1970 Playboy interview, Ehrlich claimed that resource scarcity would cause friction between nations, which could escalate to “thermonuclear war.” In the same interview, he argued that air pollution would change the weather which could “very easily lead to massive starvation in the United States within the next two decades.” ⁵

Ehrlich predicted that “Lead, zinc, and tin will probably be exhausted by the end of the century.” ⁶ They have not: according to the United States Geological Survey’s 2019 Mineral Commodity Summaries, the world’s lead resources total more than 2 billion tons, the world’s reserves of tin total 4.7 million tons, and the world’s zinc resources total to 1.9 billion tons. ⁷

Population Control and Fertility

During speeches, Ehrlich would often tell his audiences that “population control starts at home,” referencing the fact that he decided to only have one child and receive a vasectomy afterward. While giving a speech at the University of Toledo, he was interrupted by a baby. To underscore his thesis about overpopulation, he pointed at the baby and joked, “there’s the problem.” ⁸

In his 1970 Playboy interview, Ehrlich said families should not have more than two children and that achieving a low national average fertility rate of 1.3 children per family is an obligation to bring down growth. He advocated for the government to start a propaganda campaign that would discourage Americans from having more than two children and called for the stigma against childless couples to be abolished. Eventually, Ehrlich thought the government would have to set up a fertility limit, punishing those that disobeyed and rewarding those that followed it: “Laws control the number of wives you can have now and, if necessary, they’ll control the number of children you can have, too.” ⁹

Ehrlich championed women entering the workplace in order to bring down the birth rate and recommended that all men receive vasectomies. ¹⁰

He also argued that a high fertility rate among white people is more detrimental than high fertility rates in third world countries like India and among racial minorities in first world nations like African Americans because the first world middle class white population consumes more resources per capita and thus their children produce more pollution. He claimed that economic equality would bring down the fertility rates among minorities, should that be a concern to racists that fear racial replacement. ¹¹

“Eco-Catastrophe!” essay (1969)

Ehrlich was the author of “ECO-CATASTROPHE!” the cover story of the September 1969 issue of Ramparts. ¹²

Ehrlich’s essay amplified an argument made in The Population Bomb, his 1968 best-selling book in which he predicted that “hundreds of millions of people” would starve to death in the 1970s and that “nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” ¹³

Ehrlich began his “ECO-CATASTROPHE!” essay with the hypothetical story of the world’s oceans dying in 1979, largely due to the technologies of the “Green Revolution.” The Ramparts cover art depicted a tombstone with “The Oceans” engraved at the top. ¹⁴

In the world that transpired afterward, according to Encyclopedia.com, the Green Revolution was “the notable increase in cereal-grains production in […] developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s” that “resulted from the introduction of hybrid strains of wheat, rice, and corn (maize) and the adoption of modern agricultural technologies, including irrigation and heavy doses of chemical fertilizer.” These technologies averted the famines Ehrlich was predicting because they “allowed many developing countries to keep up with the population growth that many observers had expected would outstrip food production.” ¹⁵

American agronomist Norman Borlaug won a 1970 Nobel Prize for his contributions to the so-called Green Revolution. ¹⁶

In the alternative future imagined in Ehrlich’s 1969 Ramparts essay, the Green Revolution was exposed as “more talk than substance” by the early 1970s. ¹⁷

“Distribution of high yield ‘miracle’ grain seeds had caused temporary local spurts in agricultural production,” wrote Ehrlich, who also imagined this good fortune had coincided with “excellent weather had produced record harvests.” This allowed us to falsely “indulge in an outburst of optimistic propaganda about staving off famine.” ¹⁸

But “reality was not long in showing itself,” he told Ramparts readers, as if he were a narrator from decades in their future. He somberly added that famines returned and crop yields fell. ¹⁹

“Everywhere hard realities destroyed the illusion of the Green Revolution,” wrote Ehrlich of his prophecy. “Yields dropped as the progressive farmers who had first accepted the new seeds found that their higher yields brought lower prices—effective demand (hunger plus cash) was not sufficient in poor countries to keep prices up. Less progressive farmers, observing this, refused to make the extra effort required to cultivate the ‘miracle’ grains.’” ²⁰

A cascade of disasters ensued, according to Ehrlich’s dystopian future, including “miracle rats” who began eating the “miracle rice” as early as 1969. ²¹

“It was a combination of ecosystem destablization, sunlight reduction, and a rapid escalation in chlorinated hydrocarbon pollution from massive Thanodrin applications which triggered the ultimate catastrophe,” wrote Ehrlich of what killed off life in the ocean. In Ehrlich’s fictional future, “Thanodrin” was a Soviet-built agricultural technology created to bail out the failures of the American-led Green Revolution. But Thanodrin just exacerbated the problem. ²²

In this nightmare scenario, the starving and desperate world was forced to turn to radical population control. ²³

“A pretty grim scenario,” wrote Ehrich, returning to the real world. “Unfortunately, we’re a long way into it already. Everything mentioned as happening before 1970 has actually occurred; much of the rest is based on projections of trends already appearing.” ²⁴

“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” he warned Ramparts readers. ²⁵

“It took several million years for the population to reach a total of two billion people in 1930, while a second two billion will have been added by 1975!” explained Ehrlich. “By that time some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” ²⁶

“Man is not only running out of food,” warned Ehrlich in the final paragraph, “he is also destroying the life support systems of the Spaceship Earth.” ²⁷

There were 3.6 billion people alive when this essay was published in 1969, more than 4.6 billion by 1982, and nearly 8.2 billion in 2024. ²⁸

In 2023, the CBS News broadcasters from 60 Minutes interviewed Ehrlich about his latest prediction of a “mass extinction.” ²⁹

“Oh, humanity is not sustainable,” explained Dr. Ehrlich, then age 90. “To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you’d need five more Earths. Not clear where they’re gonna come from.” ³⁰

In February 2024, according to a Palo Alto Online profile, Ehrlich was still listed as an “Emeritus Professor of Population Studies” at Stanford University. According to the local news website, “Ehrlich is grateful to Stanford for giving him decades of academic autonomy and surrounding him with excellent colleagues to enable him to pursue his work.” ³¹

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3. Carrington, Damian. “Paul Ehrlich: ‘Collapse of Civilisation Is a near Certainty within Decades’.” The Guardian. March 22, 2018. Accessed June 11, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich.
4. Reinhold, Robert. “Foe of Pollution Sees Lack of Time; Asserts Environmental Ills Outrun Public Concern.” The New York Times, August 10, 1969, August 1969 edition. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/08/10/89016187.pdf.
5. Ehrlich, P. R. Playboy Interview: Dr. Paul Ehrlich – a candid conversation with the outspoken population biologist and prophet of environmental apocalypse.” Playboy Magazine. 1970. Pg. 56-57.
6. Ehrlich, P. R. Playboy Interview: Dr. Paul Ehrlich – a candid conversation with the outspoken population biologist and prophet of environmental apocalypse.” Playboy Magazine. 1970. Pg. 60
7. U.S. Geological Survey. “Mineral commodity summaries 2019: U.S. Geological Survey.” U.S. Geological Survey. 2019. https://doi.org/10.3133/70202434.
8. Ehrlich, P. R. Playboy Interview: Dr. Paul Ehrlich – a candid conversation with the outspoken population biologist and prophet of environmental apocalypse.” Playboy Magazine. 1970. Pg. 56.
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12. Ehrlich, Paul. “ECO-CATASTROPHE!” Ramparts. September 1969
13. Mann, Charles C. “The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation.” Smithsonian Magazine. January 2018. Accessed September 20, 2024. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/
14. Ehrlich, Paul. “ECO-CATASTROPHE!” Ramparts. September 1969
15. “Green Revolution.” Encyclopedia.com. May 13, 2018. Accessed September 20, 2024. https://www.encyclopedia.com/plants-and-animals/agriculture-and-horticulture/agriculture-general/green-revolution
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23. Ehrlich, Paul. “ECO-CATASTROPHE!” Ramparts. September 1969
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27. Ehrlich, Paul. “ECO-CATASTROPHE!” Ramparts. September 1969
28. “World Population by Year.” Worldometer. Accessed September 20, 2024. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
29. Pelley, Scott. “Scientists say planet in midst of sixth mass extinction, Earth’s wildlife running out of places to live.” 60 Minutes | CBS News. January 2023. Accessed September 20, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/earth-mass-extinction-60-minutes-2023-01-01/
30. Pelley, Scott. “Scientists say planet in midst of sixth mass extinction, Earth’s wildlife running out of places to live.” 60 Minutes | CBS News. January 2023. Accessed September 20, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/earth-mass-extinction-60-minutes-2023-01-01/
31. Listgarten, Sherry. “Some provocative thoughts from Paul R. Ehrlich.” Palo Alto Online. February 18, 2024. Accessed September 20, 2024. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/blogs/a-new-shade-of-green/2024/02/18/some-provocative-thoughts-from-paul-r-ehrlich/