[profstasiak]

how is Paul Ehrlich linked to the original post?

what is he wrong about?

[UncleMeat]

Paul Ehrlich was the most visible figure in the midcentury fear of overpopulation. He claimed that by now we'd have seen starvation so profound around the world (100,000,000s dead of starvation) that large portions of the third world would collapse completely and that the only mechanism to prevent this starvation was extreme population control measures placed by the west on the rest of the world (including things like partitioning India and just letting some regions starve completely to death with no aid). He believed that the sustainable population for the planet was one billion.

He was completely wrong. I think it is a great example to use in these modern discussions. Just 50 years ago we were seeing highly influential people say "we are going to breed ourselves to death and the only solution is extreme curtailing of rights." Today, we are starting to see highly influential people say "we are going to not-breed ourselves to death and the only solution is extreme curtailing of rights."

[Animats]

India got there on overpopulation. Total fertility rate around 6 in 1965. India does not have enough water for its population.[1] China would have hit similar problems if not for their one-child policy. China managed to avoid the overshoot when medicine starts to work but the economy hasn't developed yet. India didn't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity_in_India

[api]

Unfortunately a lot of people are now saying we need extreme curtailing of rights -- largely womens' rights -- because of underpopulation. The answer to every panic is always curtailing of rights. Scary thing may happen therefore we need big alpha ape to fix it for us by bashing people on head with big rock. Grunt, grunt.