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The book is primarily a repetition of the Malthusian Catastrophe argument, that Population growth will outpace Agricultural growth unless controlled. It assumes that the population is going to raise exponentially, on the other hand the resources, in particular food, are already at their limits. Unlike Malthus , Ehrlich predicted that not only the overpopulation will hit in some indefinite future, but it is certain to lead to a massive disaster in the next few years. Also unlike Malthus, Ehrlich didn't see any means of avoiding the catastrophe, and the solutions for limiting its scope he proposed were much more radical, including starving whole countries that refused to implement population control measures. :"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..." The book deals not only with food shortage, but also with other kinds of crises caused by rapid population growth, expressing the possibility of disaster in broader terms. A "population bomb", as defined in the book, requires only three things:
Also worth noting is Ehrlich's introduction of the Impact formula: I = PAT (where I=Impact, PAT = Population x Affluence x Technology) Hence, Ehrlich argues, affluent technological nations have a greater '' Per Capita '' impact than poorer nations. The predictions not only did not come true, the world developed in a direction completely opposite to the one predicted by Ehrlich, without implementing any of his proposed measures. The world food production grows exponentially at a rate much higher than the population growth, in both developed and developing countries, partially due to the efforts of Norman Borlaug 's " Green Revolution " of the 1960s , and the food per capita level is the highest in the history. On the other hand population growth rates significantly slowed down, especially in the developed world. The famine has not been eliminated, but its root cause is political instability, not global food shortage {Link without Title} . Although Ehrlich’s theory influenced 1960’s and 1970's public policy, a post-analysis by , K. (1994, Winter). The Baby Boom generation and How they Grew, ''Chance: A Magazine of the American Statistical Association.'') External links |