The Bleeding Edge
5 min read

Death of an Apocalyptic Environmentalist

It’s hard to believe that anyone would listen to Paul Ehrlich at all after being so concretely proven to be incorrect in his “science.”

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Published on
Mar 24, 2026

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They were each other’s nemesis.

Ironically, they both believed in the same underlying problem: The world’s population was growing faster than the earth’s ability to feed it.

What they disagreed on was what to do about it.

William Vogt, an ecologist born in 1902, believed that if the world’s population continued to grow and consume at the pace expected, there would be devastation on a global scale.

Mass starvations causing the death of untold hundreds of millions were forecast.

Vogt founded a movement that was referred to as “apocalyptic environmentalism.”

It was based on creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

His desired “solution” to population growth was to limit it.

Vogt was such a strong advocate of population control…

He went so far as to become the national director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

“A Biographical Sketch”

A devout follower of Vogt, Paul Ehrlich was arguably an even more rabid, fanatical amplification of Vogt’s ideology.

And he became far more famous and well-known, thanks to his 1968 book “The Population Bomb.”

Ehrlich’s book forecasted widespread famines and mass starvation for large swaths of the human population.

He went so far as to write that “in the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.”

He also forecasted life expectancy in the U.S. to fall to 42 years of age by 1980 due to the use of pesticides.

Selfishly, he proclaimed back then that the world’s population needed to be cut in half.

He went so far as to urge wealthy countries to cut off food assistance to the third world and to sterilize parts of the human population so that they couldn’t procreate.

He was heartless, self-righteous, and evil.

But Norman Borlaug, an agronomist born in 1914, had a different outlook on the issue of how to feed the world’s increasing population.

By using technology, Borlaug took another approach.

“Preceded By…”

Rather than looking to curtail or reduce the world’s population as a solution to reducing societal impact on the environment, he used technology to accommodate the world’s increase in population… and dramatically reduce global famine.

Borlaug was an innovator.

He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1937 in plant pathology and genetics.

He then took a research position in Mexico, where he developed high-yield, disease-resistant wheat.

This was just the beginning of what many refer to as the “Green Revolution.”

And the impacts were astounding…

Borlaug’s goal was simple: To produce high-yielding crops to ensure that the world had enough food to avoid starvation.

And he succeeded, not by just a little bit, but to an exceptional degree.

It has been said that Borlaug has saved more lives than any other person in history, perhaps as many as 1 billion.

And one chart tells the whole story…

From the 1920s through the 1960s, there were still hundreds of famine-related deaths per 100,000 people globally.

In the 1960s, there were about 16.6 million total deaths due to famine.

But by the time Borlaug’s innovative approach to agriculture had taken hold on a global scale, that number had dropped by more than 80%.

Today, it sits at only three deaths per 100,000 people and continues to drop.

Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

And rightfully so.

This is truly one of the greatest stories of human ingenuity.

And yet, for decades after, population alarmist Paul Ehrlich amassed a large audience.

“Service Details”

Ehrlich continued to make dire predictions about our future…

Here is a list of his most significant predictions:

  • Mass global starvation in the 1970s and 1980s.
  • The global population will overtake the food supply, resulting in 100-200 million deaths from starvation.
  • There would be a “Great Die-Off” of 4 billion people in the 1980s, which would include about 65 million Americans.
  • By 1980, all important sea animal life would become extinct.
  • There would be food and water rationing in the 1970s.
  • “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
  • A scarcity in resources would drive up metals prices, specifically copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten during the 1980s and 1990s (note: prices did the opposite and dropped).

Obviously, we all recognize that every single one of these predictions has been proven to be completely wrong.

It’s hard to believe that anyone would listen to Ehrlich at all after being so concretely proven to be incorrect in his “science.”

And yet, there still remain many who believe this nonsense.

There are even some strong arguments that the people behind the manmade COVID-19 virus, through gain-of-function research, and the corresponding mRNA “vaccines” (experimental drugs) were designed explicitly for population control – the largest genocide in world history – which we continue to see in the data in excess deaths across all countries that pushed the mRNA “vaccines.”

Vogt, Ehrlich, and his followers, full of fearmongering and impractical “solutions,” were wrong… dead wrong.

“Survived By…”

Ehrlich died on March 13 at 93.

He never, not once, admitted that his predictions were completely wrong (note: all of them were wrong).

In fact, in a 2009 interview, Ehrlich said that the biggest flaw in his book “The Population Bomb” was that it was “much too optimistic.”

His only concession was that his timing on his predictions was a bit too premature. Pathetic. His book was written 58 years ago.

Borlaug, on the other hand, with his supporters, used technology to feed the planet and stave off starvation.

Technology has already brought about a world of abundance.

The builders, creators, problem-solvers, business leaders, and engineers proactively used and developed technological solutions to the world’s challenges. We won, and we will keep winning.

This is the way.

Technology will lead to limitless, cheap, clean, abundant energy worldwide.

It will lead to cures for all diseases known to humanity…

It will continue to reduce the number of deaths worldwide related to transportation accidents…

It will continue to improve the quality of our lives…

It will eventually eliminate what is left of poverty around the world…

It will reduce the amount of human labor required.

It will recapture our time.

And in time, it will take us to the stars.

Paul Ehrlich is survived by 8,298,978,817 human beings on Earth, more than 130% more than in 1968.

Jeff, E/ACC

Jeff Brown
Jeff Brown
Founder and CEO
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