The Disaster's the Same. The Causes Are Different

A week or two ago (I'm right up with current affairs) the Guardian had an article where Paul Ehrlich claimed that a shattering collapse of civilisation was a near certainty in the next few decades.  I must admit I was surprised.  Firstly because I thought Paul Ehrlich had starved to death in the global famine of the late seventies that wiped out 80% of the world's population.  I personally only survived by cannibalising the neighbour's children.  Then I remembered that Ehrlich was white and lived in America so it isn't so surprising that he survived.  Then I remembered that the entire famine thing didn't happen either, I wonder if its too late to send an apology card to the neighbours.

Paul Ehrlich garnered massive fame from a book he wrote in the late sixties called "The Population Bomb" which basically predicted a "shattering collapse of civilisation" within the next decade.  Unfortunately for those hungering for genocide by proxy the entire event failed to materialise on schedule and Ehrlich had to put up with being mocked by less intelligent, less well educated people (like me) for years afterwards. 

Still he hasn't let it slow him down.  The good thing about a failed prediction is that you can use it again next time.  There are also signs Ehrlich has learnt from his failure to be last man standing in a world of corpses.  Firstly in a belated blame spreading exercise he has acknowledged that his wife assisted in writing the book.  How she (a noted biologist in her own right) feels about being saddled with joint responsibility for this is unmentioned.  Secondly while his new predictions are as appropriately apocalyptic as ever note the language that has been used.  The shattering collapse is a "near certainty" in "the next few decades".  Unlike The Population Bomb which said (I'm paraphrasing) "Everybody is going to die on such and such a date" Ehrlich now merely says it will probably happen soonish.  There's enough wriggle room there for him to claim to be a successful prophet if the Earth gets wiped out by a meteorite hit in seventy years time and also to give himself an out when it fails to happen at all.

I'm not saying Ehrlich is wrong in his reasoning.  Frankly I doubt if he was wrong in his reasoning for The Population Bomb either.  His problem, and the reason why he wound up looking foolish, is the same one encountered by Malthus.  Essentially very intelligent people often have difficulty realising that the rest of the population aren't necessarily inert jellyfish to which events in the world merely happen.  Humanity failed to starve to death in the seventies because we decided not to.

Ehrlich's solution to our not quite inevitable doom is to make modern contraception and back up abortion available to all (although presumably targeted mainly at women) and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities with men.  This he feels would lead to a natural drop in population over time.  It would also require a ruthless world government capable of overriding thousands of years of culture and accepted practice across most of the world and forcing obedience on all.  Such a government could only be trusted to a person like (to take an example completely at random) Paul Ehrlich.  I'm not saying he's a megalomaniacal psychopath, I'm just suggesting that he can't think of anybody else better qualified to run the planet.

It's unfair of me to single out Paul Ehrlich because he's certainly not alone.  Virtually every world saving plan seems predicated on those coming up with it having absolute dominion over the human race.  It would take a nastier and more suspicious mind than I possess to suspect that such people would actually be disappointed if we somehow manage to solve the problems without their help.  Oh wait a minute, no it wouldn't.

Here is my prediction based on nothing more than a (very) vague knowledge of history and a somewhat less vague understanding of humanity.  The problems facing us will be solved.  They won't be solved in the way that Ehrlich and other environmentalists want but solved they will be.  They will not be a final or ultimate solution, rather they are likely to cause more problems for the future that we will need to solve in their turn.  I'm also prepared to bet that Ehrlich and others like him will not be happy with the solution and will carry on predicting disaster because ultimately we won't be coming to them for the answer. 

I don't mean to diminish the contribution that Ehrlich and others have made.  If we don't realise there's a problem we're hardly likely to fix it.  The environmental movement has made a great contribution to society in the time its been around and if that contribution has been largely incidental to what they were attempting to achieve then I merely point out that this is how we deal with most of our problems.  What we shouldn't do is actually hand over the levers of power to people who seem to want them so eagerly.

I have to go now, I've just heard that my Tasmanian correspondent has spent the weekend fighting off an octopus.