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There are moments in modern science and policy when the consequences of groupthink become painfully clear, and the case of Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb is one of them. Ehrlich thundered in 1968 that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over” and warned that in the 1970s “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death,” a prediction that should haunt anyone tempted to hand over more power to technocrats.
Steve Forbes has been right to remind Americans not to forget how catastrophists like Ehrlich got it spectacularly wrong, because the lesson is political as much as scientific. Forbes and other clear-headed commentators have pointed out that markets, innovation, and human ingenuity — not command-and-control planning — produced the solutions that averted the nightmare scenarios predicted by alarmists.
The real-world rebuttal to Ehrlich’s doom was not rhetoric but results: the Green Revolution, led by figures like Norman Borlaug, massively increased crop yields and kept millions from starving, while free enterprise and price signals encouraged innovation and resource substitution. Those aren’t abstract talking points; they are concrete historical facts that undermined the doomsayers’ claims and proved that people are the ultimate resource.
Conservatives should use this episode as a cautionary tale against surrendering more authority to alarmist experts who mistake pessimism for prudence. The Julian Simon–Paul Ehrlich wager remains a symbol of optimism over pessimism: where Ehrlich saw only limits, Simon and others saw opportunity in human creativity and economic freedom, and history sided with the optimists.
Too often today’s policy debates recycle the same apocalyptic framings — from climate to food security — that once justified intrusive, expensive, and liberty-crushing solutions. Hardworking Americans deserve policy rooted in evidence, humility, and respect for market-tested solutions, not perpetual fear campaigns that lead to poor outcomes and larger government.
So let’s remember the Population Bomb fiasco not as an academic footnote but as a living lesson: celebrate human ingenuity, defend free markets, and be skeptical of those who demand sweeping power on the basis of speculative doom. If we keep faith in American enterprise and common sense, future generations will inherit abundance rather than the self-fulfilling shortages conjured by the alarmists.
