The Population Bomb Four Decades On – Are we still doomed?

The Population Bomb is one of the founding texts of the modern environmental movement. It revived and popularised neo-Malthusian concerns that current rates population growth would lead to human and environmental disaster, a fear revived every year on the UN’s World Population Day (Saturday July 11).

Since its release, The Population Bomb has received aspersion and approbation in more or less equal measure. But writing in the new issue of the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, its authors Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich (unnamed co-author of the original book) have few regrets: indeed, they argue that “perhaps the most serious flaw in The [Population] Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future”.

From global warming and ozone depletion to collapsing fisheries and industrial agriculture, the Ehrlichs say that “the environmental and resource impacts of past and future population growth will haunt humanity for a long time.”

But another paper in the new issue of the EJSD suggests that the Ehrlich’s doom-and-gloom scenarios are unwarranted. Indur Goklany – co-editor of the EJSD – argues that “despite unprecedented growth in population, affluence, consumption and technological change, human well-being has never been higher.”

Reduced hunger and malnutrition, improved access to clean water and sanitation, higher literacy and schooling – all of these things mean that we now live longer and better lives than we did forty years ago – a stark contrast to the scenario painted in the Population Bomb.

Goklany concedes that the record is mixed for the environment – but argues that this justifies more, not less, wealth and technology: “Initially, in the rich countries, affluence and technology worsened environmental quality, but eventually they provided the methods and means for cleaning up the environment… After decades of deterioration, their environment has improved substantially.”

The main worry for Goklany and others is that the “policy preferences of some environmentalists and Neo-Malthusians, founded on their skepticism of affluence and technology, would only make progress toward a better quality of life and a more sustainable environment harder. Their fears could become self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Issue 3 of the EJSD – “The Population Bomb Four Decades On” – is available at http://www.ejsd.org/docs/The_Population_Bomb_Four_Decades_On.pdf

HTML and PDF versions available for each paper at www.ejsd.org

The EJSD is a peer-reviewed, open access, online journal- the result of a partnership between International Policy Network and the University of Buckingham.

Volume 1, Issue 3: "The Population Bomb Four Decades On"

CONTENTS

Editorial: The Persistence of Population Pessimism
Julian Morris

Articles

The Population Bomb Revisited
Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich

Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being?
Indur Goklany

Population Growth, Increases in Agricultural Production and Trends in Food Prices
Douglas Southgate

Julian Simon and the “Limits to Growth” Neo-Malthusianism
Paul Dragos Aligica

Land Conflict and Genocide in Rwanda
Karol Boudreaux

The Post War Intellectual Roots of the Population Bomb
Pierre Desrochers and Christine Hoffbauer

Population Growth and Cities
Randal O’Toole

Book Reviews

Review of “Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World”
By Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2008
Review by Chris Coyne

Review of “Sex, science & profits”
By Terence Kealey
William Heinemann (Random House), London, 2008
Review by Pierre Desrochers

Review of “Greener pastures: decentralizing the regulation of agricultural pollution”
By Elizabeth Brubaker
University of Toronto, 2007
Review by Glenn Fox

Review of “Blue planet in green shackles”
By Vaclav Klaus
Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2007
Review by Peter Gordon

Review of “Fatal misconception: the struggle to control world population”
By Matthew Connelly
Harvard University Press, 2008
Review by Heli Kasanen

Review of “Creating a world without poverty: social business and the future of capitalism”
By Muhammad Yunus
Public Affairs, New York, 2007
Review by Per L Bylund and Mario Mondelli

Review of “The dominant animal”
By Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich
Island Press, 2008
Review by Matt Ridley

Review of “Starved for science: how biotechnology is being kept out of Africa”
By Robert Paarlberg
Harvard University Press, 2008
Review by John H. Sanders