The latest Radio Ecoshock show:
PAUL EHRLICH - THE DOMINANT ANIMAL and the Fate of Biodiversity. New book by Stanford Professor and author of "The Population Bomb" and dozens more. Wide-ranging speech on threats to humanity, and to all species. Recorded UBC 080924 Ecoshock Show 081010 1 hour
It's a very good talk, but I think he underestimates sea level rises -- he says we will always be able to out walk them, I don't expect that this will be the case...
Out walk them, maybe, but does that mean that it will not create a crisis when the hundreds of millions of people living in low lying coastal areas have to find new places to live?
Maybe Ehrlich just doesn't want to be tied to dire predictions like those he's made in the past. Maybe he'll be several decades off, but he'll probably be generally right. These were sloppy statements though, and they've made it harder to get through the solid, factual information to people ever since...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich
"In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make, ... The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." Paul Ehrlich in an interview with Peter Collier in the April 1970 of the magazine Mademoiselle.
"By...[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." Paul Ehrlich in special Earth Day (1970) issue of the magazine Ramparts.
"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death." (Population Bomb 1968)
"Smog disasters" in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." (1969)
"Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." (1976)
"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." (1969)
"By 1980 the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would drop to 22.6 million." (1969)
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