The Book That Got It Wrong — Catastrophically
Few books in modern history have caused as much harm as Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, published in 1968. In it, the Stanford biologist predicted mass starvation, societal collapse, and civilizational ruin — all driven by a supposedly out-of-control global population. More than half a century later, almost none of his predictions came true. But the damage his ideas caused? That was very real.
National Post columnist Raymond J. de Souza has written a sharp reassessment of Ehrlich's legacy, arguing that the book "unintentionally became a racist tract of huge impact" — one that contributed to coercive sterilization programs, restrictive immigration policies, and a fundamental misreading of human development.
Predictions That Never Came True
Ehrlich was spectacularly wrong on the facts. He predicted that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s, that India was beyond saving, and that the world simply could not feed itself. Instead, the Green Revolution dramatically increased food yields. Global hunger, while still a serious problem, declined significantly as a share of world population. Life expectancy rose. Child mortality fell.
The human ingenuity Ehrlich dismissed turned out to be the very thing that proved him wrong.
The Racist Undercurrent
Where Ehrlich's ideas caused the most suffering was in how they were applied. His framework — that there were simply too many people in the wrong parts of the world — mapped neatly onto existing racist and colonialist attitudes. The result was a wave of coercive population control programs, particularly targeting people in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Indigenous communities in North America.
In Canada, the echoes of this ideology were felt in policies affecting Indigenous women, some of whom faced coerced or forced sterilization well into the late 20th century. A 2021 Senate report documented ongoing cases of forced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canadian hospitals — a practice rooted, in part, in the same Malthusian anxieties that Ehrlich's book amplified.
Ideas Have Consequences
De Souza's column is a reminder that bad ideas, especially when dressed up in scientific language, can cause immense real-world harm. The Population Bomb was written with apparent sincerity, but sincerity is no defence against error — and certainly no defence against the suffering that followed.
What's striking is how long it took mainstream institutions to seriously challenge Ehrlich's framework. He remained a celebrated public intellectual for decades despite being wrong about virtually everything. His core thesis — that human beings are fundamentally a burden on the planet — lingered in environmental discourse long after the evidence had thoroughly discredited it.
A Lesson for Today
As Canada and other nations grapple with declining birth rates and aging populations, the irony is hard to miss. The very countries once told they had too many people are now worried they don't have enough. Demographers warn of labour shortages, pension crises, and economic stagnation in a low-fertility world.
Ehrlich's legacy is a cautionary tale: ideology dressed as science, with devastating consequences for millions of people who were deemed inconvenient by the theorists who claimed to be saving the planet.
Source: National Post — Raymond J. de Souza, "Paul Ehrlich's wicked ideas about overpopulation caused massive suffering"
