The Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting interpretive
article about a 1968 book, Paul R. Ehrlich, “The Population Bomb”. I remember scanning this on the bus when I was in the Army.
The article indicates that the book had a tremendous but
misleading influence on the future of world population growth, causing
repressive birth control policies in authoritarian countries (maybe even China’s
one-child policy). The article notes
that it is consumption per person that matters as much as population
itself. That ties in to the current
debate on climate change, which Trump wants to deny.
It’s interesting that a single book can have so much worldwide
influence. Sometimes well-meaning authors give authoritarian leaders excuses to
do what they want.
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