In my last post, I noted that the Democrats offered the same false diagnoses, leading them to propose policies that have failed in the past. Shortly after publishing, I learned of Paul Ehrlich’s passing. The Stanford biologist’s life encapsulates how misinformation underlies progressivism. Worse, these mostly highly educated people are aware of these falsehoods, but they work very hard to avoid the truth.

Paul Ehrlich may not be well known among today’s youth, but they may be contending with his effect. His book, “The Population Bomb,” written with his wife and published in 1968, sold millions of copies. The Author was a fixture on The Late Show.” Exposed to his frightening predictions of mass famine and the collapse of overpopulated societies, people worldwide changed their behavior, and some nations even adopted policies to restrict population growth.

Some found the idea of parenthood selfish and a threat to the planet. Many skipped the adventure of parenthood. As a result, many never became grandparents, and we have fewer cousins. Beyond individual decisions, some nations took stringent measures to curb population growth.

On the surface, his thesis seems plausible. If humans were allowed to breed like rabbits, they would soon outrun the planet’s ability to provide food and resources. The only possible outcome is a massive die-off.

This theory isn’t new. In 1798, Thomas Malthus observed that humans reproduced geometrically, while food resources grew only arithmetically, setting up a trap that could only lead to dire circumstances—his outwardly logical theory occurred during the Age of Reason and the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

Instead of utter poverty and starvation, the following years saw the greatest leap forward in human well-being. At the same time, population growth dwarfed anything in history. With more educated people free to trade goods and ideas, with access to capital, we innovated our way out of the trap. Markets, rather than autocratic governments, allocated resources, achieving better results. We called this Capitalism. In the 228 years since, the Earth’s population has grown at least eightfold, while living standards have greatly improved.

Undeterred by the empirical evidence all around us, Ehrlich rolled out his updated version of Malthus’ gloom and doom. Against the evidence presented that shows humans have a say in determining their future, and proving Ehrlich and Malthus are wrong.

The eminent economist Julian Simon pointed out Ehrlich’s errors and challenged him to a wager. If Erlich was correct, commodities under population pressure could only become more expensive. Simon let Ehrlich choose any five and see if, in ten years, when Ehrlich predicted a crisis, these would indeed be more expensive.

Known as the “Great Wager,” Simon won going away. All five commodities were, in fact, cheaper, meaning they were abundant rather than Ehrlich’s prediction of scarcity. Humiliated, Erlich refused to sign the check for Simon’s winnings, leaving that to his wife.

However, if you thought the facts consigned the Malthus-Ehrlich bleak outlook theorists to the dustbin of history, you’d be wrong. In 2023, Erlich appeared on the prestigious “Sixty Minutes” TV show to promote his memoir, which also featured the same despair, linking his former overpopulation theory to climate change. I observed in my post at the time, “He’s back,” his interviewer, the much-awarded anchor Scot Peely, allowed the aged biologist to repeat his fallacies, with no mention of the wager.

My post at the time showed how the progressive-leaning media kept misbegotten theories alive if it served their purposes, mainly by ignoring the facts. Nothing has changed. The New York Times, one of the pillars of progressivism, in its Paul Ehrlich obituary, to its credit, mentioned “the Great Wager, but alluded to the possibility he might’ve only got the timeline wrong. The Times obit noted, “In 2018, he told The Guardian that an unsustainable focus on ‘perpetual growth’ — leading to climate change and loss of biodiversity — meant that the collapse of civilization was a near certainty in the next few decades.”

Just as when Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” predictions failed to come true, progressives excuse them as only a timeline failure. We’re still doomed, but it’s just further out. After 228 years, “doom is just around the corner” is getting a little old.

More egregiously, the Times failed even to mention the negative effects of Ehrlich’s ideas on nations. The Washington Post Editorial Board made no such mistake, observing, “The bad news is that government policies were made with overpopulation fears in mind. China’s one-child policy is the most famous, and the societal wreckage it has left behind is staggering. Forced sterilizations in India and many African countries prevented millions of lives from being conceived.”

China alone will suffer from demographic imbalances resulting from its population control actions, such as its one-child policy and forced sterilizations, far into the future. Here in the U.S., as in so many other nations, we will have to contend with too many older people supported by too few young to maintain our social programs.

We see the same dynamic in the so-called “Climate Crisis.” Al Gore and his followers have fostered a misallocation of resources, and we become more aware of it every day. U.S. auto companies alone have written off $55-70 billion in electric vehicle costs so far, with more to come. Wind and solar’s inability to deliver reliable power in an AI world will strand billions more. Europe’s adoption of green energy has left it vulnerable and at a competitive disadvantage, a situation that will take a long time to correct.

Tellingly, no one has ever asked Ehrlich or Gore to return any of the awards and honors showered on them.

Democratic stalwart and former mayor of Chicago, among his many government positions, Rahm Emanuel, stated: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Meaning use the fear generated by a crisis to impose your policies.

No crisis available, no problem. Invent one. There are too many people, and we’ll all starve. The planet is warming so fast that we’ll all fry. Only government action can save us, or at least some of us.

Since time immemorial, rulers have used fear to keep the masses in line. This spate of bogus crises is just another way for elites to dominate us. Our wild overreaction to COVID was never based on facts, but it will continue to affect us. Some children will never catch up.

Rather than being stampeded by self-interested fear-mongers, we need to emulate our founding fathers in rational thought to confront and solve problems. Aferall, we’re not starving or frying. Put our minds to real-world solutions, and we’ll be all right. So far, we’re doing a lot better than Paul Ehrlich and his ilk predicted.