The Population Bomb was a Bust

In the influential 1968 book The Population Bomb , Paul Ehrlich made the following claim based on the pop science of his day: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." In fact, since Ehrlich's book was published, maize and cereal production has risen more than 300% in Asia, more than 280% in Africa, more than 250% in South America. In the U.S., food production has risen even as the number of acres under cultivation has decreased. In the meantime, the population has increased only 90%. As Bret Stephens observes, "But whatever the reason, the world isn't likely to be getting any hungrier. Quite the opposite: Purely natural (as opposed to man-made) famines are becoming unknown. As the Irish economist Cormac O Grada noted in a 2010 paper, 'in global terms, the margin over subsistence is now much wider than it was a generation ago. This also holds for former famine zones such as India and Bangladesh, whereas China, once "the land of famine," nowadays faces a growing problem of childhood obesity.' Only in Africa is food scarcity still an issue, but even there recent food crises in Malawi and Niger did not result in major loss of life. What does hurt people is bad public policy. Exhibit A is the U.S. ethanol mandate--justified in part as a response to global warming--which diverted the corn crop to fuel production and sent global food prices soaring in 2008. Exhibit B is the cult of organic farming and knee-jerk opposition to GMOs, which risk depriving farmers in poor countries of high-yield, nutrient-rich crops. Exhibit C was the effort to ban DDT without adequate substitutes to stop the spread of malaria, which kills nearly 900,000 people, mostly children, in sub-Saharan Africa alone with each passing year. The list goes on and on. Environmentalists tend to have conveniently short memories, especially when it comes to their own mistakes" ("Does Environmentalism Cause Amnesia, "The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 6, 2013).

(Friday Church News Notes, November 15, 2013, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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