Paul Ehrlich, prophet of 'overpopulation' doom, invited to speak at Vatican conference [CC]

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Paul Ehrlich, who predicted the near-extinction of the human race through overpopulation in his 1968 best-seller, The Population Bomb, has been invited to speak at a Vatican conference on sustainable economic growth.

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I read that book in high school. it really scared me. that book and women’s lib really messed me up as a teenager approaching adulthood.
 
I read the book when it first came out. He turned out to be egregiously wrong in his predictions of demographic disaster. We were supposed to have a massive die-off some decades ago even in the U.S. Now, the greatest worry demographically is about declining fertility rates. He has no credibility whatsoever.
 
JimG said:
I read the book when it first came out. He turned out to be egregiously wrong in his predictions of demographic disaster. We were supposed to have a massive die-off some decades ago even in the U.S. Now, the greatest worry demographically is about declining fertility rates. He has no credibility whatsoever.
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It’s fine to have a theory and publish it, but it also is not exempt from criticism.

A lot these elite to left-leaning doomsday predictions have not occurred. That’s the not the problem. The problem is them limiting the free exercise of criticism because they were wrong or cannot stand being wrong or there is some financial incentive to keep junk science going.
 
JimG said:
I read the book when it first came out. He turned out to be egregiously wrong in his predictions of demographic disaster. We were supposed to have a massive die-off some decades ago even in the U.S. Now, the greatest worry demographically is about declining fertility rates. He has no credibility whatsoever.
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It reminds me of the climate change fears now.
 
If some of his predictions turned out to be wrong, it is an innocent mistake. The greater problem is support for legal abortion. What if someone supports White Supremacy, or the right to terrorize cities in Europe with explosives, as part of what they consider a larger social benefit? Should such a person be invited to speak at a Church conference, if they also happen to have known scientific expertise on some issues?

Legal abortion has taken far more lives than terrorism; would a church conference invite the IT director of ISIS to speak, if he happens also to have doctorate in something?
 
Hey Mr. Fox, we are having a discussion on the security of our hen house. Come on over! 🤷
 
“The man who symbolizes global birth control will be arriving in the Vatican to give a lecture on how to save the planet by sacrificing human beings. It seems unbelievable, but so it is. We’re speaking of Paul R. Ehrlich, the American biologist who became famous in 1968 with the book The Population Bomb. That was the beginning of the fortunate (at least for the author) season of eco-catastrophe literature, whose real target was humanity.”
Population Controllers to pontificate at the Vatican.
 
It probably would make “he who is prince of this world” more comfortable if there were fewer Catholics. Mr. Fox indeed.
 
I have liberal friends who think it very lofty to say things like having children is selfish and that it isn’t clear why our species should continue at the expsense of anything else. If I had not heard it for myself I would have thought these crazy thoughts were entertained by freaks and not well educated otherwise very thoughtful people. Thanks to this thread, I now have the name of the prophet whose teachings my friends follow whether they know they are or not.

But why are we inviting him to speak to us? Hasnt he done enough already?
 
To quote a previously cited article (Population Controllers to Pontificate at the Vatican):

“If there were any justice, Dr. Ehrlich ought to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Instead, thirty-nine years later, he’s receiving the honor of entering the Vatican in great pomp and circumstance, invited by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, both headed by Msgr. Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the occasion being a symposium on biological extinction: titled, “How to save the natural world on which we depend,” which will be held February 27 to March 1.”
 
Putting this into perspective, it is not the nonsense, “the world is overpopulated and only those who are worth saving are worth saving.” Has Mr. Ehrlich learned anything after his mistaken, and grossly ridiculous speculations of 1968? If he has, and I don’t think the Vatican invites just anybody, let’s see what he has to say first.

When I saw the cover of the first edition of his book, it read like the cover of a supermarket tabloid. Yep, we’re all going to starve to death shortly.

Before Paul Ehrlich, there was Thomas Malthus.

"The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS (13 February 1766 – 29 December 1834)[1] was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography.[2] Malthus himself used only his middle name, Robert.[3]

"In his book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation’s food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, mankind had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the “Malthusian trap” or the “Malthusian spectre”. Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship and want and greater susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving and in principle as perfectible.[4] He saw population growth as being inevitable whenever conditions improved, thereby precluding real progress towards a utopian society: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”.[5] As an Anglican cleric, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour.[6] Malthus wrote:
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That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,
That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,
That the superior power of population is repressed by moral restraint, vice and misery.[7]"
There are those who post here that there are too many people. What some don’t know is that farmers in the US are paid billions of dollars to grow nothing. Part of this rests on supply and demand. Example - not actual figures - : Say the nation consumes and exports 18 billion bushels of corn per year. Now, growing more corn reduces the cost of corn, since the only way to get rid of the surplus is to lower the price.

The other aspect concerns weather predictions. If drought is predicted or actual drought occurs in one part of the country, growers in other parts of the country will do what they can to make up the difference, or imports would have to occur.

In other words, the capacity to produce more food exists. Only profits stand in the way.

Ed
 
How wrong do you have to be before they stop inviting you to prestigious events?

Couldn’t they find anyone better?
 
In the early 90s I attended a lecture given by Paul Erlich about the world’s population explosion and impending doom. He was extremely passionate. Although the prophesies he had made in the 60s - starvation of entire populations, massive air pollution causing death, and devastating loss of organisms hadn’t materialized as predicted, he now had newer, more dire computer models made possible by better technology to scare us into believing conception and birth needed to immediately and drastically be curbed. The earth couldn’t sustain many more people…population control was the ONLY option. The models were impressive. I’m sure he influenced many to contracept, sterilize, and abort…for the good of mankind. Guess since the scarcity of resources wasn’t killing the numbers of people predicted, scientists now had to take matters into their own capable hands and preach destruction of life in the womb if necessary, and definitely, prevent the Author of life from creating new lives!

Wonder what new and better information this culture of death expert will present to continue to influence Catholics?
 
JimG said:
“The man who symbolizes global birth control will be arriving in the Vatican to give a lecture on how to save the planet by sacrificing human beings. It seems unbelievable, but so it is. We’re speaking of Paul R. Ehrlich, the American biologist who became famous in 1968 with the book The Population Bomb. That was the beginning of the fortunate (at least for the author) season of eco-catastrophe literature, whose real target was humanity.”
Population Controllers to pontificate at the Vatican.
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Great link Jim.
As the article in your link points out, the problem is not that one fox (Paul Erlich) was invited to the hen house…The hen house has become the foxes’ lair… Many invited who will push population control (abortion and contraception), and this mindset has taken hold in Vatican circles for years.
 
One problem with Erlich’s kind of thinking is that he worries about all kinds of resources except the one renewable resource which can also solve resource problems—human beings. Many nations now have fertility rates so low than they risk stagnation, decline, or absorption by those with sustainable fertility rates. Population gurus should now be warning us about the coming population bust and economic depression it will bring, but they are stuck in the 1970’s.
 
I_trust said:
Great link Jim.
As the article in your link points out, the problem is not that one fox (Paul Erlich) was invited to the hen house…The hen house has become the foxes’ lair… Many invited who will push population control (abortion and contraception), and this mindset has taken hold in Vatican circles for years.
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I just don’t understand how this is possible.
 
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