Only in the last paragraph of the March 17 editorial “Paul Ehrlich, 1932-2026” did the Editorial Board acknowledge Ehrlich’s true contribution. It stated that Ehrlich’s warnings about overpopulation “distracted many from the significant challenges that humanity does face. Climate change, pollution, disease, poverty, state failure and war are real problems that humans are working to alleviate.” Yet each one of those problems is worsened by having too many people on the planet.
Rob Shutler, Arlington
It’s sad to see the Editorial Board embrace the absurd notion of seemingly infinite growth on a finite planet. Just because “The Population Bomb” presented some exaggerated scenarios of mass starvation doesn’t mean Paul Ehrlich, a highly acclaimed scientist, was wrong about everything.
Pro-growthers love to point, as the Editorial Board does, to the agricultural advancements of the Green Revolution as proof that humanity can innovate its way out of every crisis. They ignore that the Green Revolution was arguably the worst thing that has ever happened to our natural environment. Modern agriculture is a leading cause of climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and air and water pollution.
Yes, we mercifully managed to avert mass starvation, but not without cost. Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution whom the Editorial Board approvingly cites, warned that if we don’t rein in population growth, “the success of the Green Revolution will be ephemeral only.” If it held true that larger populations translated to more innovation and progress, at 8.3 billion and counting, we should be seeing some improvement in our environmental crises. The opposite is true; we are breaching ever more critical planetary limits.
Ehrlich was certainly wrong about some things, but to dismiss his warnings completely is foolish.
Olivia Nater, Washington
The writer is the communications manager at Population Connection.
Paul Ehrlich’s extraordinarily pessimistic view of the relationship between population growth and imminent starvation was based on a common misunderstanding of the relationship between supply and demand. This misunderstanding applies equally to optimistic estimates of Earth’s “carrying capacity” and potential food supply.
The mistake is to assume that food supply is the independent variable, expanding only through fortuitous invention, and population size the dependent one.
In fact, the reverse is true, dating back to the origins of farming circa 10,000 years ago: Farming wasn’t “invented” fortuitously but adopted as human populations exceeded the food supply of traditional foraging techniques. The supply of food expanded to meet demand. Demand was the independent variable, pushing improvement or expansion in food production techniques until the origin of social classes (“civilization”), which rendered the lower classes unable to exert demand for food despite their need.
Even today, the problem isn’t the lack of food supply but the lack of demand. The very poor no longer exert demand for food because demand constitutes not only need but also ability to pay. If the poor could afford to buy food, we would find ways and places to grow it. We aren’t trying.
Mark Nathan Cohen, Plattsburgh, New York
The writer, a distinguished professor emeritus of anthropology at the State University of New York, is the author of “The Food Crisis in Prehistory” and “Health and the Rise of Civilization.”
A mirror of 1956
President Donald Trump’s approach to the war with Iran in many respects resembles the 1956 Suez Crisis, though the shoe is now on the other foot. In 1956, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden was so enraged by the seizure and closure of the Suez Canal by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser that he created a secret coalition with France and Israel to attack Egypt and regain control of the canal.
Eden did not explain to the British public what he intended to do, and his justification for his actions was never clear. The invasion succeeded in decimating Egyptian forces. The run-up to the crisis also provided a convenient distraction that enabled the Soviet Union to invade Hungary and defeat an incipient revolution against Soviet control.
The parallels with today are obvious. Trump joined with Israel in an attack on Iran. The attack resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s justification for the war, to the American people or our NATO allies, is not clear. And this war enables Russia to continue and perhaps expand its attack on Ukraine.
Two more aspects to this story give pause for the future. The combined invasion of Egypt succeeded because it involved a coordinated attack using air and ground forces, while thus far in Iran there is only an air campaign. And Eden was so discredited for the war’s ultimate outcome of strengthening Egypt, and for his inability to win over the British public, that he resigned only months later.
Michael S. McGill, Alexandria
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