Paul Ehrlich, cannibalism and the Overpopulation Myth: A conversation with PRI president, Steve Mosher
Why does Dr. Paul Ehrlich, entomologist, author and Stanford professor still get attention after being wrong so many times and what is his motivation for making such outrageous statements as, “I think the issues are more likely to be “is it perfectly OK to eat the bodies of your dead because we’re all so hungry” as he did 10 days ago in an interview on HuffPost Live?
To answer these questions and to take a look at the “Overpopulation Myth”, I had the opportunity to talk to the President of the Population Research Institute, Steven Mosher yesterday to get his thoughts on these topics (Listen below).
Mr. Mosher first pointed out that Ehrlich is a world-renowned expert on butterflies, saying, “Unfortunately, that knowledge about butterflies does not transfer over to understanding how human beings behave. To suggest that we are so short of food on the planet, that we may one day need to practice cannibalism is nonsense.”
Mosher continues by saying that Ehrlich’s statement is nonsense on several levels including that technology today gives the ability to easily feed 12-14 billion people on the planet. He says that the global population is currently 7 billion and will only max out at 9 billion in the next couple generations, peaking around 2050, before declining.
Another words, says Mosher, “We will never reach the point, at which there will be global food shortages ever again.”
Mr. Mosher says Prof. Ehrlich has been wrong from the beginning, from his publication of “The Population Bomb” in 1968 to current day. From ideas like putting contraceptives in the water to proposing the US institute a 2-child policy (sound familiar?).
Concerning overpopulation, or the myth of overpopulation, Mosher explains as an illustration- you could put everybody on the planet, the 7.1 billion people and “fit them in the state of Texas, give everybody a single family house with a front and back yard and the rest of the world would be empty”.
“This hysteria over something called overpopulation is being used by certain people for their own purposes”, Mosher says using Ehrlich as an example. TV appearances, books, high-paycheck lectures, to sum it up Fame and wealth for “telling tall-tales”.
Concerning the Ehrlich interview, Mosher says The Huffington Post should be ashamed for running the interview.
To learn more about Steven Mosher and the Population Research Institute, check their website here