Overview
- Stanford ecologist Paul R. Ehrlich, author of the 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb and coauthor of a landmark 1964 co‑evolution paper with Peter H. Raven, died in March 2026 at age 93.
- Ehrlich’s book warned of inevitable mass starvation, yet the global population grew from about 3.5 billion in 1968 to roughly 8.1 billion today as famine deaths and undernourishment rates fell.
- Reporting attributes the improved outcomes to advances such as Green Revolution crop gains, expanded global trade, and faster international responses to crises.
- His rhetoric helped shape family‑planning policies, including coercive measures cited in India’s sterilization drives and China’s one‑child policy, which officials say produced hundreds of millions of abortions and sterilizations.
- Supporters credit him with expanding access to contraception and reproductive choice, while critics note he kept sounding alarms late in life, including in a 2023 60 Minutes interview, and lost a 1980 resource‑scarcity bet to economist Julian Simon.