‘Ever-wrong Ehrlich’s’ Greatest Hits (er, misses)
20 hours ago Guest Blogger
by Dave Burton with a postscript by Anthony Watts
Biologist Paul Ehrlich died on Friday, March 13, 2026, at the age of 93.
His famous 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” changed the world. He famously predicted that human “overpopulation” would soon outstrip food supplies, leading to catastrophic famines, and societal collapse. He predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s, that India would be unable to feed its population by 1980, and that major countries like England would no longer exist by the year 2000.
The New York Times tactfully wrote that, “his predictions proved premature.”
When Ehrlich wrote his book, in 1968, the world’s human population was between 3.5 and 3.6 billion people. Today it is over 8 billion. Yet famine deaths, which were common when Ehrlich wrote his book, have become rare, as population and CO2 levels have risen:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/03/17/10449934/
