Aug 25, 2018 3 min read

This week (August 28) in 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, a biologist teaching at Stanford University, published a best-selling book titled “The Population Bomb,” whose opening sentence was, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate … “

The human race’s massive destruction was a frightening reality, Ehrlich argued, because it would be impossible to grow enough food to sustain a population that would more than double in the coming decades. The result would be global starvation and global conflicts, from nations, to local tribes, to neighbors fighting over dwindling food supplies.

Sure enough, the population in the next two decades did more than double, resulting in global food-consumption increases of nearly 25 percent. But, percentage-wise, the death rate actually declined, and today the world’s population is approximately 7.5 billion, up from the 3.5 billion it was in 1968.

What Professor Ehrlich failed to consider, as has been the case so often in history, was the immensity of human ingenuity, and the surety that when circumstances demand it, that ingenuity will rise to the occasion. Or to put it in more familiar language, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

One with such faith in human ingenuity was Julian Simon, an economist who argued human creativity will, as it always has, improve our living standards. He noted over the centuries, new resources based on technological progress replaced older ones in meeting our needs.

Further, Simon argued, prices of most commodities decreased as supplies increased, and the same will apply to food.

This led to a bet in 1980 between Ehrlich and Simon in which Simon allowed Ehrlich to choose 10 commodities, and if during the next 10 years their price increased, he would win the bet. If the opposite happened, Simon would win.

Ehrlich picked 10 different metals, all of which decreased in price by an average of 30 percent by 1990. Simon won the bet convincingly.

Ehrlich subsequently admitted some of what he predicted hadn’t occurred, but countered in the four decades from 1968 to 2009 some 200 to 300 million people died of hunger.

However, given that his book predicted “In the 1970s (a single decade) hundreds of millions will starve,” the 200 to 300 million figure over a four-decade span meant significantly fewer had died than he predicted.

What is more, the main cause of famine during those 40 years was regional political instability (see sub-Saharan Africa), not global shortages of food.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s email address is bruce@historylessons.net.