Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t tony_g – “The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
The full interview is available here.
Serial doomsday prophet Paul Ehrlich admits he got it wrong on mass starvation, the green revolution (agricultural) boosted yields and fed the world. But this hasn’t discouraged Ehrlich from making more predictions of mass doom – he claims his 1968 climate catastrophe predictions are still on track.
What can I say – I think it is nice for old people to have a hobby, keeps them active.
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Oh crap. Not another prediction from the guy who has had nothing but failed predictions for decades. Yep. Just can’t keep his mouth shut and make a fool out of himself for the umpteenth time.
Do folks actually believe this nutjob at this point? Time to reopen the loony bins. Oh wait, that is what the universities have become.
Just sayin’.
The guy is 90 in the shade.
His thinking hasn’t changed in decades and never will.
Ehrlich has made a good living out of being wrong. Just like Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize for lying.
He was also dead wrong about the metal markets and scarcity which he knew zip about. Such predictions based on no academic or professional knowledge or experience support the notion that any good yarn will do as long as the average policy maker and average reader does not know much either or it involves nonlinear or not obvious relationships.
An extinction I would like to see is that of self-aggrandizing pseudo-scientists like Ehrlich and Mann.
And yet we are still here … better fed, better educated, longer lived, and with fewer poor.
Fortunately Paul Erlich isn’t sustainable. Ashes to ashes for all of us in the end. Saying civilization won’t be what we’re used to in a few decades is the easiest prediction yet. Few things stay the same over twenty years. The end is always nigh which is the same thing as next week will be different than this week.
I did not know April fools day had moved to January. Once I stopped laughing I realized he was serious. Broken Clock strategy, he has been perennially wrong for 50 years but just wait ultimately he will be correct. Just wait, and wait, and wait………
After 50 years, and seeing he was wrong about his predictions, you would expect him to learn from his mistakes. But he can’t do that, because *his view of the world is wrong*.
Clearly with one foot in the compost Erlich wants to be remembered as the “I-told-you-so” king, but hasn’t enough wit to know truth from fiction. He will always be know as just another deluded catastrophist.
The readers and commenters on this site should know that Paul Ehrlich will be right. Just not in the time frame or way he originally thought, and not for the reasons he believed.
If the environmentalists and progressives get their way, energy production and food will be cut to some rate/volume that will not sustain our current population. No fertilizers allowed, no fossil fuels allowed. The progressives will tell us that Ehrlich was right all along as millions die from starvation and exposure, but the root cause will be the measures put in place by progressives and environmentalists.
Yes, happening today
I’m confused. Did Ehrlic predict the introduction of Eco-Fascist policies? Because THAT is the only thing that will make his wet dream catastrophes come to life.
If the mass stupidity of “green” policies stops, there won’t be any “end of civilization as we know it.”
NOR DOES THERE NEED TO BE.
Does Paul Ehrlich still want all the poor brown people to starve to death? With the current War on energy in the US and the shooting war in Ukraine (it and Russia are major food and fertilizer exporters), Ehrlich may finally get his wish.
Maybe he could do something useful like explaining why the Doomsday Clock gets stuck and out of the news when a Dem is in the WH but with a land war in Europe and exponential growth of nukes in Russia, China and NK arsenals.
He is correct in the limited cases of SF and Portland.
Corporate media drags this thing out from where ever to start the new year off?
But nothing on the twitter files, FTX ect?? Can’t believe a single word from
the MSM….
“The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”
And we are the ones making damn sure that it happens …
Under the Catastrophysics of Ehrlich and others, the end is always nigh, and the jig is always up. The fix is in, the horse has left the barnyard, and the chickens are coming home to roost, not to mention the climate canary in the coal mine has kicked the bucket.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice,shame on me.
What?
Now he’s claiming in 1968 he predicted there would be a climate catastrophe!
BS as well as wrong, wrong, wrong
“What can I say – I think it is nice for old people to have a hobby, keeps them active.”
Here in the U.S. we have a dementia ridden old fart ruining the country to keep him active. The results are not optimal.
Paul Ehrlich should have been deposited in the dust bin decades ago but the leftists keep trotting him out like a prize pony.Pathetic.
“Humanity is consuming 175 percent of what the earth can regenerate.”
I could just leave it there but where to begin?
Related to this I also see there is something called ‘Earth Overshoot Day’:
“Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. In 2022, Earth Overshoot Day lands on July 28.”
So if everything has been used up by July 28, which is also a very precise date, then what are people consuming after that date because there are 5 months in this fantasy world before all the Earth’s ecological resources are somehow restocked? If they aren’t restocked then something is very wrong with this hypothesis as all life should have gone some decades ago. At the website overshootday.org is a table listing countries and how many earths each one requires. Out of 188 countries it is stated that 132 need more that 1 earth. This is all written as if true.
https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/#:~:text=Humanity%20is%20using%20nature%201.8,the%20resources%20of%201.8%20Earths.
Poor old boy, he’s been assimilated.
It had to happen, he had to succumb, become A Borg, a Stepford Wife or Dalek.
It seems that even his own wife was instrumental, now become a Screaming Shreaking Hysterical Shrew
His prediction did come true, Humanity died. The soul. The spirit. The empathy. The real science. Medicine & Politics. All dead
Only zombies remain. The lights are on but no-one’s home
In their sugar-induced depression, belligerence, paranoia and magical thinking, the zombies have convinced themselves that everything is never better – while at the same time everybody else is wrong.
How do you square that circle?
Seriously: If everything is ‘never better’ – why is everybody else always doing something wrong?
As long as the sugar keeps coming, so it will be: Simultaneously never better and always wrong
Maybe Paul is on something? He should apply to be one of the first Mars settlers – the Martians can teach him many things
How embarrassing: Old age is going to get Paul Ehrlich before any of his predictions will.