“The Population Bomb” led to the sterilization of 8M Indians | Hacker News Reader

“The Population Bomb” led to the sterilization of 8M Indians

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Honestly the incredibly incorrect assumptions from the population bomb and that eras politicians horrifying responses have made me question our assumptions about climate change. Lessons from the past like Erlich’s mistakes can caution us against having too much hubris in these modern times about future predictions.

If we are so unable to predict the future consequences of dumping an unlimited amount of carbon dioxide and methane into the Earth's atmosphere, then I would think the cautious approach would be to cease such action.

This is the first sentence of the book:

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's and 1980's hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."

The man should have long ago changed his last name to "Scare-lich".

how did the prediction turn out to wrong? like, that quote seems to imply that there was insufficient agriculture to sustain the current generation of humans, not just the next (since sufficiently brutal "crash programs" could keep the population from growing entirely.) and it's not like there was any big leap in ag sci enabling expansion, like the Haber process. like, I'm literally just confused, did he forget to carry the 2 or something?

How insane and most probably against some human rights laws. Plus, the whole population narrative has now been turned on its head. Most developed countries are now going through irreversible population decline, which will cause some of the most violent social upheaval (see France pension protests).

what does "irreversible" mean in this context? the population hasn't been sterilized, French people are perfectly capable of making more of themselves. there may be economic or cultural reasons why they choose not to, but that doesn't sound irreversible.

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