This Earth Day, Disregard Ehrlich and Embrace Abundance

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. Scientific models and predictions can’t be taken as fact. This is true of the late biologist and alarmist Paul Ehrlich, whose lies and doomsday predictions about population growth and natural resource depletion traveled the world and negatively influenced people. Arguing for the suppression of the human population was Ehrlich’s unashamed stance behind everything he said.

As the former president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, Ehrlich was considered an authoritative voice on human population dynamics and conservation of nature. His greatest error, however, was treating human flourishing as an impediment to environmental progress. He advocated for voluntary sterilization, supported China’s one-child policy, and falsely concluded there would be food shortages as the world population grew. (RELATED: Death of a Charlatan)

Ehrlich’s views became globally amplified when he garnered significant attention for his bestselling 1968 book The Population Bomb. The book conveyed a central argument: that the world’s population rising above two billion would cause unsustainable environmental destruction and resource depletion, threatening civilization as we know it. By his logic, the world population had to be curtailed — capped at two billion people — or catastrophe would ensue. (RELATED: Desired Fertility Is Too Low to Avoid Depopulation)

Fortunately, time ultimately proved Ehrlich wrong. Human beings have adapted and innovated, as they always have. Ehrlich’s predictions of widespread famine now look laughable in hindsight. Today, with a global population hovering around 8.3 billion, the percentage of the world facing extreme poverty has miraculously decreased by 65 percent since 1990, per World Bank estimates. Malnourishment rates have precipitously dropped in recent decades across the world, with the steepest decline in sub-Saharan Africa. And Ehrlich’s prediction of nuclear war never materialized either. (RELATED: The Horrific Legacy of Paul Ehrlich)

In an October 2022 interview, Ehrlich reflected that the suffering of butterflies inspired his views about population control. Observing how housing developments take over the habitats of butterflies in New Jersey, Ehrlich lamented that he wasn’t able to breed butterflies. While it is unfortunate that some butterflies cannot inhabit much of their historical range, this is not exactly a major issue in world affairs. More revelatory is that Ehrlich felt more of an affinity towards butterflies’ habitats than those of human beings.

This story belies a broader narrative, one often on full display on Earth Day: Climate activists imply human flourishing is greedy and detrimental to the “natural world,” as if human beings are somehow divorced from their environmental surroundings. Humans can indeed have negative impacts on the environment if there’s no balance between production and conservation. This scenario, thankfully, is increasingly rarer today. Humans need resources to sustain our population, and conservation — the wise use of natural resources — needs human attention to preserve at-risk populations. Yet this fact often gets overlooked and is tragically drowned out by slogans.

Paul Ehrlich stated that his preference was for nature to “take its course,” even at the expense of people. Ironically, Ehrlich believed his goal to lower the human population was altruistic. This clear paradox never deterred his many followers, who gave him tremendous notoriety.

By excluding humans from his definition of nature, Ehrlich discounted how humans sustain life on Earth: energy production. Energy production is a crucial part of our society’s ability to function, and a pillar of critical industries like agriculture and health care. We cannot afford to remove our resources from the natural human cycle of consumption and production. Notably, the most prosperous nations are energy-rich ones.

This Earth Day, let domestic energy production flourish alongside true conservation efforts. The United States is among the largest producers and consumers of oil in the world. Domestic energy production not only feeds, houses, and safeguards the population; it also helps conserve land. For example, offshore oil and gas royalties are responsible for generating $900 million annually to support the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) that conserves public lands and recreational spaces.

This Earth Day should be dedicated to reclaiming conservation in a way that promotes life and human flourishing. The timing is ripe for a needed shift in framing. Currently, the Trump administration is focused on reshoring domestic manufacturing — an important means of offsetting real environmental degradation caused by manufacturers that adhere to poor environmental standards elsewhere in the world. Producing more in the United States also protects Americans from being penalized by unanticipated market shocks. Supply chain disruptions are far more of a problem than overpopulation.

And, on Earth Day, it is appropriate to celebrate humans as the best stewards of nature and the Earth. After all, humans are the only species that can consciously conserve all other species. This is an important aspect of modern life that Ehrlich, who has accurately been described as wrong about everything during his lifetime, did not appreciate.

Ehrlich cast darkness into the conservation movement, calling on humans to engage in self-abnegation. This argument was wrongheaded at its core. Instead, one can empower individuals by encouraging them to accept agency for their actions, rather than assigning them imaginary blame for a looming disaster: one that, of course, never came to fruition.

At the same time, Ehrlich denied basic tenets of human nature. He argued that women, if afforded the choice, would prefer a motorcycle over having several children. And, bizarrely, despite being a lifelong academic, he adopted a scathing view of academia, claiming that right-wing Harvard alumni are “idiots” and that it is a “horrible thing” that Stanford has economics and business departments.

Ehrlich’s legacy can be drilled down like this: he was the ultimate purveyor of climate hysteria. Although his outlandish predictions were proven wrong, the fear he instilled endures in fearmongering that demands Earth cease to have human flourishing. Humanity, of all the species, has far and away the greatest capacity to regenerate Earth’s resources. This Earth Day, we should all unapologetically recognize and applaud the fact that more people and more energy go hand-in-hand.

Gabriella Hoffman is the director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at Independent Women. Sydney Rodman is a visiting fellow with the Independent Women’s Center for Energy and Conservation.