**Submission Statement:** Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, *The Population Bomb* introduced the formerly fringe idea of overpopulation into main street discourse. Despite population growth leveling off, and set to decline in much of the “First World”, the idea of an overpopulated dystopia remains in the back of many minds. Nearly 60 years later, Ehrlich’s predictions did not come to pass, and it failed to foresee the technological advancements that increased efficiency would bring. Still, tenets from his book have infected politics on the Left and Right with the idea that “the pie cannot grow, so we must limit and regulate those can partake in it”.
ModernArgonauts on
> Ehrlich built his reputation on unnervingly radical solutions to avoid what he believed was the planet’s imminent destruction. What he failed to understand was how, time and again, our ingenuity has proved that the limits to growth are not as immutable as we once believed.
Truth nvke
MarkRobinsonsBurner on
I’ve had too many conversations explaining that GDP can increase without greater natural resource use
3 Comments
**Submission Statement:** Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, *The Population Bomb* introduced the formerly fringe idea of overpopulation into main street discourse. Despite population growth leveling off, and set to decline in much of the “First World”, the idea of an overpopulated dystopia remains in the back of many minds. Nearly 60 years later, Ehrlich’s predictions did not come to pass, and it failed to foresee the technological advancements that increased efficiency would bring. Still, tenets from his book have infected politics on the Left and Right with the idea that “the pie cannot grow, so we must limit and regulate those can partake in it”.
> Ehrlich built his reputation on unnervingly radical solutions to avoid what he believed was the planet’s imminent destruction. What he failed to understand was how, time and again, our ingenuity has proved that the limits to growth are not as immutable as we once believed.
Truth nvke
I’ve had too many conversations explaining that GDP can increase without greater natural resource use