Dear Professors Oreskes and Conway,
You mention twice The Population Bomb in your book Merchants of doubt. You write :
Sagan agreed, along with biologist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, author of the famous 1960’s book The Population Bomb. »
and :
Edward Teller, Robert Jastrow, and Fred Seitz had been particularly appalled at William Carey’s decision to praise the TTAPS and Ehrlich work in Science. They especially disliked Paul Ehrlich, whose Population Bomb was one of the foundational works of the American environmental movement.”
As you well know, The Population Bomb made predictions that have proven to be completely wrong and defended ideas that amounted to advocating the starvation of hundreds of thousands of people to avoid the famines the author falsely predicted:
Finally there is the last tragic category -those countries that are so far behind in the population-food game that there is no hope that our food aid will see them through to self-sufficiency.
The Paddocks feel that our limited assistance should go to those whom it would save, not to those who can survive without it or those who can’t be saved in any case. Their views have not, to say the least, been greeted with enthusiasm by foreign governments, by those in our government whose jobs depend on the willy-nilly spreading of American largesse abroad, or by the assorted do-gooders who are deeply involved in the apparatus of international food charity. Criticism from some of those groups is a compliment.
In my opinion, there is no rational choice except to adopt some form of Paddocks’ strategy, -at least as far as food distribution during famine is concerned. They deserve immense credit for their courage and foresight in publishing Famine-1975!, which may be remembered as one of the most important books of our age. »
http://pinguet.free.fr/ehrlich68.pdf
As a secondary school teacher, I find your books both inspiring and resourceful. However, I must express my disappointment that you do not clearly characterize the fact that when Science published and praised Ehrlich’s work as late as 1983, this renowned journal committed a serious error. Teller, Jastrow, and Seitz disliked Ehrlich, and we, you and me, dislike Teller, Jastrow, and Seitz, but we must admit that they were right when they were particularly appalled at William Carey’s decision to praise the TTAPS and Ehrlich work in Science, as you write. I regret that, unless your readers are familiar with the history of population control, they will not understand that Science‘s decision gave those who denigrate science a strong argument when they claim to fight against its politicization or when they point to the lack of objectivity of their adversaries. When I first read your book, The Population Bomb was, for me, no more than a “famous book,” as you write, and the protests of Teller, Jastrow, and Seitz seemed dishonest or unfounded. Since then, I have read Fatal Misconception by Matthew Connelly, who has extensively explored the history of population control and revealed a complex story of well-meaning individuals who have caused terrible harm and sometimes went to defend or endorse the most ominous positions, as, indeed, Ehrlich did.
Ehrlich’s case matters. He is one of the “liberal” faces of a complex that produces, often unknowingly, disinformation, falsehoods, and lies, contributing to the aggressive and imperialist foreign policies of the United States and its corporations. Kissinger’s conceptions as they appear in the 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200) aligns seamlessly with The Population Bomb. The policies promoted in this memorandum contributed to crimes such as those that occurred in Peru under Fujimori’s rule, where hundreds of thousands of indigenous women were sterilized, potentially amounting to genocide. I may be mistaken, but I feel that by neglecting Ehrlich and The Population Bomb, you are missing a segment of the phenomenon you are studying. There are differences between Seitz and Ehrlich, but there are also common features that bring them together, one of which is bad science. We need a comprehensive description of the mechanisms generating bad science—one that does not overlook “liberal” bad science produced without the involvement of large corporations, but which can sometimes serve their interests. Let’s consider that bad science continuously emerges, and that there are many Ehrlichs out there, with something we might call (pending a better term) “the system” selecting the kind of bad science that fits its narrative.
Dear Professors, I plan to publish this letter on my blog on December 5. Please let me know if you would like me to publish your response as well.
Kind regards,
Sebastian Nowenstein
Professeur agrégé, Lycée Gaston Berger, Lille.