From Reason Magazine:

Environmentalists and globalization foes are united in their fear that greater population and consumption of energy, materials, and chemicals accompanying economic growth, technological change and free trade—the mainstays of globalization—degrade human and environmental well-being.

Indeed, the 20th century saw the United States’ population multiply by four, income by seven, carbon dioxide emissions by nine, use of materials by 27, and use of chemicals by more than 100.

Yet life expectancy increased from 47 years to 77 years. Onset of major disease such as cancer, heart, and respiratory disease has been postponed between eight and eleven years in the past century. Heart disease and cancer rates have been in rapid decline over the last two decades, and total cancer deaths have actually declined the last two years, despite increases in population. Among the very young, infant mortality has declined from 100 deaths per 1,000 births in 1913 to just seven per 1,000 today.

These improvements haven’t been restricted to the United States. It’s a global phenomenon. Worldwide, life expectancy has more than doubled, from 31 years in 1900 to 67 years today. India’s and China’s infant mortalities exceeded 190 per 1,000 births in the early 1950s; today they are 62 and 26, respectively. In the developing world, the proportion of the population suffering from chronic hunger declined from 37 percent to 17 percent between 1970 and 2001 despite a 83 percent increase in population. Globally average annual incomes in real dollars have tripled since 1950. Consequently, the proportion of the planet’s developing-world population living in absolute poverty has halved since 1981, from 40 percent to 20 percent. Child labor in low income countries declined from 30 percent to 18 percent between 1960 and 2003.

Equally important, the world is more literate and better educated than ever. People are freer politically, economically, and socially to pursue their well-being as they see fit. More people choose their own rulers, and have freedom of expression. They are more likely to live under rule of law, and less likely to be arbitrarily deprived of life, limb, and property.

Social and professional mobility have also never been greater. It’s easier than ever for people across the world to transcend the bonds of caste, place, gender, and other accidents of birth. People today work fewer hours and have more money and better health to enjoy their leisure time than their ancestors…

Read the whole thing.

Contrast this record of human achievement not just against the doomsayers of today, but against the perpetual predictions of impending humanitarian disasters that have been with us always.

Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich is a good example. Today he is one of the elder statesmen of the environmental movement, lending his celebrity status to the cause of climate hysteria. Back in the 1960s he was a NYT best selling author, writing things like:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

and

A minimum of ten million people, most of them children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of the century.

and

Our position requires that we take immediate action at home and promote effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.

and

There is no sacred legal “right” to have children. The argument that family size is God’s affair and not the business of the government would undoubtedly be raised — just as it was against outlawing polygamy. But the government tells you precisely how many husbands or wives you can have and claps you in jail if you exceed that number.

and

A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies — often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival.

What the hell is he talking about? Humanity is a “cancer”? What “brutal and heartless decisions” must be made? Mass exterminations? Forced sterilizations?

In more recent interviews Professor Ehrlich betrays an antipathy towards basic human progress, saying:

Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.

and

We’ve already had too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.

Professor Ehrlich obviously hates people. He feels an urgent need to set aside basic human rights in favor of an all powerful, coercive central authority. But he is no fringe lunatic. He is a a tenured professor and respected academic. A few of his awards:

• The John Muir Award of the Sierra Club
• The Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International
• MacArthur Prize Fellowship
• The Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• ECI Prize winner in terrestrial ecology in 1993
• A World Ecology Award from the International Center for Tropical Ecology, University of Missouri in 1993
• The Volvo Environmental Prize in 1993
• The United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize in 1994
• The Heinz Award for the Environment in 1995 (as in Theresa Heinz-Kerry)
• The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 1998
• The Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences in 1998
• The Blue Planet Prize in 1999
• The Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America in 2001
• The Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences in 2001

Ehrlich dreams of totalitarian utopia, and he’s willing to make the most absurd predictions under the guise of science to hasten the abandonment of individual liberties. He is not unique - university basements are full of passionate, bright, narrow, anti-social types who think the whole world should drop everything to support their vision. Political collectivists find natural alliances with such people, finding a common cause in promoting central authority at the expense of individual liberty.