The Rise of Paul Ralph Ehrlich
Paul Ralph Ehrlich, who died on March 13, 2026, at the age of 93, is, no doubt, one of the most consequential scientists in American history. After writing his doctoral dissertation on butterflies, he joined Stanford University as a biologist and served on the faculty from 1959 until his retirement in 2016.
The Impact of The Population Bomb
His most famous book, the one that brought him notoriety and influence, The Population Bomb, was published in 1968, the same year he became a founding member and the first president of Zero Population Growth (ZPG).
Through many of his publications, he had a knack for sweeping predictions. The Population Bomb begins: “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….We are today involved in the events leading to famine and ecocatastrophe; tomorrow we may be destroyed by them…We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.” In 2018, Smithsonian Magazine published a major retrospective entitled “The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation.”
Political Influence and Policy Response
The political impact of The Population Bomb was described as “swift and profound.” That fall, Richard Nixon was elected president and six months into his first term, Nixon delivered a “Special Message to the Congress on Problems of Population Growth and appointed a Presidential Commission on Population Growth and the American Future to study the issue. Ehrlich and John Holdren contributed a paper on “Population, Resources, and the Environment” to the Commission’s research volume, which reportedly “became an important element of its final report.” When released in March 1972, the Report was influential in advocating population control and legalized abortion as a cure for overpopulation.
Population Concerns and Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade may be Ehrlich’s most enduring impact. In one of the federal cases on abortion which were pending at the Supreme Court during consideration of the abortion cases, federal judge J. Edward Lumbard cited The Population Bomb and the Commission’s Report. Lumbard wrote:
The Malthusian specter, only a dim shadow in the past, has caused grave concern in recent years as the world’s population was increased beyond all previous estimates. Unimpeachable studies have indicated the importance of slowing or halting population growth…In short, population growth must be restricted, not enhanced and thus the state interest in pronatalist statutes such as these is limited.
Judicial Influence and Public Opinion
As the Commission’s Report was published, Justice Harry Blackmun was working on his draftopinion in the abortion cases. And opinions of Lumbard and his colleague Jon Newman were influential with several of the Justices.
Concern about population growth directly influenced some of the Justices in Roe v. Wade, which reached the Supreme Court in 1970.
Because there were no hearings on fact or evidence in the lower courts in Roe v. Wade or Doe v. Bolton, and no intermediate appellate review, the Justices were particularly susceptible to the influence of media, public opinion, even family opinions.
Virtually every point of history, economics and sociology in Justice Blackmun’s opinion for the Court in Roe and Doe were based on his own research, or that of his clerks, or interest group briefs filed in the Supreme Court on appeal.
Bob Woodward, in The Brethren, reported that “as [Justice Potter] Stewart saw it, abortion was becoming one reasonable solution to population control.” (167)
In the third paragraph of his opinion in Roe, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote: “population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones tend to complicate and not to simplify the problem” of abortion. Blackmun reiterated the point, implicitly, at the end of his Roe opinion, referring to “the demands of the profound problems of the present day.”
Predictions vs. Reality
Unfortunately, the Roe decision, striking down the abortion laws of all 50 states, was issued before Ehrlich’s population predictions could be verified. Several of Ehrlich’s most dramatic predictions about population failed to materialize. World population growth rates declined significantly after 1970, and are projected to decline more significantly over the next 25 years. Indeed, the concern of numerous nations today is that national population is falling and the rate of growth is below that necessary to replace deaths. The concern today is population implosion, not explosion.
There was no mass starvation in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, there was no collapse of England before the year 2000, there was no global famine killing hundreds of millions in the decade after The Population Bomb was published. Instead, population in the US grew but so did rising standards of living in the US and in Africa and Asia. Life expectancy has also risen in the U.S.
Criticism from Julian Simmon
Among Ehrlich’s scholarly critics, Julian Simon, author of The Ultimate Resource and The Resourceful Earth, contended “that human ingenuity was the ultimate renewable resource and that population growth, far from being a threat, was an engine of economic and technological progress.”
The Role of Experts and Elites
Our lives are undoubtedly richer because of gifted people, including experts and elites with the talent, education, and experience to think, innovate and devise new tools, medicines, and appliances which ease suffering, promote efficiency, provide clean water, and contribute to our lives in innumerable ways. We rightly applaud their gifts and public service.
How a Republic Holds Elites Accountable
As Ehrlich’s career demonstrates, however, expertise in butterflies doesn’t guarantee knowledge of population trends. As experts seek to influence courts and legislatures, their influence must be monitored and weighed. One check is through regular elections of representatives who must have the prudence to discern elites and their influence. Another check is through decentralized power. Federalism preserves freedom. The more power is centralized, the more influential elites will be in changing national policy and its impact on people’s lives.
For further reading on how these issues intersect with law, public policy, and bioethics, explore:
The Necessity of Dobbs and Its Implications for Law & Bioethics
The States in Congress: Federal Strategies for Defending Life After Roe
