Paul Ehrlich’s ‘Population Bomb’ Failure Shows the Dangers of Scientific Alarmism

But that never happened. Instead, food production and population growth boomed.

In 1969, Ehrlich told the New York Times that because of overpopulation, food production failure, and pollution: “We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

Though Ehrlich predicted complete doom for humanity by 1989, we are still here and thriving.

In 1980, Ehrlich famously bet free market economist Julian Simon $1,000 that the prices of five metals – chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten – would increase due to scarcity during the 1980s. But the price of the basket of metals declined by 43 percent. Wrong again, Ehrlich lost what became known as “The Bet.”

Until the end, Ehrlich insisted that the carrying population of the Earth was as low as 1.5 billion people. Global population is now at 8.28 billion people and growing. Ehrlich was