Ideas Have Consequences
Various bloggers and article writers have done an excellent job of laying out the many mistakes of Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich, whom CBS recently devoted a segment to on “60 Minutes.”
So I won’t bother to repeat their cogent criticisms.
Yesterday I went to the Wall Street Journal to see a letter by my friend and economist colleague Francois Melese in which he took on Ehrlich. It’s an excellent letter. Then I read one of the other letters and felt profoundly sad for the writer, Kenneth Emde of Woodbury, Minnesota.
Emde wrote:
I was a college student when I read Mr. Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb.” I took it to heart and now have no grandchildren, but 50 years later the population has increased to eight billion without dire consequences. I was gullible and stupid.
The picture above is of Paul Ehrlich.
