Paul Ralph Ehrlich (born 29 May 1932) is an American biologist and educator who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology.^[1][2]. By training he is an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies), but he is better known as an ecologist^[1] and for his warnings about unchecked population growth and limited resources. Ehrlich became a household name^[3][4] after publication of his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb.

[edit] Life and career

The Bay checkerspot butterfly

Ehrlich was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was a shirt salesman, his mother a Greek and Latin scholar.^[5] He earned a bachelors degree in zoology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1953, an M.A. at the University of Kansas in 1955, and a Ph.D. in 1957 at the University of Kansas, under the prominent bee researcher C.D. Michener. During his studies he participated in surveys of insects on the Bering Sea and in the Canadian Arctic, and then on a National Institutes of Health fellowship, investigated the genetics and behavior of parasitic mites. In 1959 he joined the faculty at Stanford, being promoted to full professor of biology in 1966. He was named to the Bing Professorship in 1977,^[6] and is he president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.^[7] In addition, Ehrlich is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.^[6]

Ehrlich continues to conduct policy research on population and resource issues, focusing especially on endangered species, cultural evolution, environmental ethics, and the preservation of genetic resources. Along with Dr. Gretchen Daily, he has conducted work in countryside biogeography, or the study of making human-disturbed areas hospitable to biodiversity. His research group at Stanford currently works extensively on the study of natural populations of the Bay checkerspot butterfly(Euphydryas).^{[citation needed]}

He has been married to Anne H. Ehrlich since 1954; he and Anne have one child, Lisa Marie.

Paul and Ann Ehrlich have been praised for bringing to public awareness issues regarding population, resources and environment, and for making "ecology" a household word.^[8]

[edit] Overpopulation debate

In December 1967, Ehrlich wrote in the New Scientist that the world would experience famines sometime between 1970 and 1985 due to population growth outstripping resources. He stated that "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." Ehrlich also stated, "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," or "be self-sufficient in food by 1971." He has been criticized as being wrong in his "predictions." Ehrlich himself concedes that he did overstate his case here, underestimating the effects of the green revolution, but that part of the reason that there have not been such serious famines has been due to a reduction in birth rates that that book had argued were necessary. He also argued that in some areas that book underestimated the dangers of high population - it made no mention of global warming for instance. ^[9] In 2006, Lara Knudsen^[10] wrote that Ehlich's views were accepted by many population control advocates in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.^[11] She chose a brief passage from the final chapter of Population Bomb, to show that Ehrlich had discussed an extreme solution to overpopulation: "compulsory birth regulation... (through) the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size."^[11]

In a 2004 interview, Ehrlich answered questions about the "predictions" he made in The Population Bomb.^[1] He acknowledged that some of what he had written had not "come to pass", but stated that he and his wife Anne had "followed U.N. population projections as modified by the Population Reference Bureau -- so we never made "predictions," even though idiots think we have." He went on to say:

When I wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, there were 3.5 billion people. Since then we've added another 2.8 billion -- many more than the total population (2 billion) when I was born in 1932. If that's not a population explosion, what is? My basic claims (and those of the many scientific colleagues who reviewed my work) were that population growth was a major problem. Fifty-eight academies of science said that same thing in 1994, as did the world scientists' warning to humanity in the same year. My view has become depressingly mainline!^[1]

Finally, Ehrlich noted that 600 million people were very hungry, billions were under-nourished, and stated that his predictions about disease and climate change were essentially correct.^[1]

In retrospect, Ehrlich feels that The Population Bomb was “way too optimistic.”^[12] He acknowledges that he underestimated the success of higher-yielding grains, and how that spurred further population growth. But he also points out that there have been perhaps 300 million deaths since the book was published that were caused in large part by malnourishment and undernourishment. He claims that the success of the “green revolution” of the 1970s is already running into the difficulties he and others predicted, while global hunger is now increasing.^[12]

[edit] Other activities

Ehrlich was one of the founders of the group Zero Population Growth in 1968, along with Richard Bowers and Charles Remington. He and his wife Anne were on the board of advisors of the Federation for American Immigration Reform until 2003. He is currently a patron of the Optimum Population Trust.

With Stephen Schneider and two other authors, writing in the January 2002 issue of Scientific American, he critiqued Bjørn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist.

[edit] Awards and honors

• The John Muir Award of the Sierra Club
• The Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International
• A MacArthur Prize Fellowship
• The Crafoord Prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and considered the highest award given in the field of ecology
• ECI Prize winner in terrestrial ecology, 1993
• A World Ecology Award from the International Center for Tropical Ecology, University of Missouri, 1993
• The Volvo Environmental Prize, 1993
• The United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize, 1994
• The 1st Annual Heinz Award in the Environment (with Anne Ehrlich), 1995^[13]
• The Albert Einstein Club Commemorative Plaque, 1997
• The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, 1998
• The Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences, 1998
• The Blue Planet Prize, 1999
• The Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America, 2001
• The Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2001
• The Fifth "Premi Ramon Margalef" in Ecology (Ramon Margalef Prize) of the Generalitat of Catalonia, 2009.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] See also

• Overpopulation
• Population Connection
• Simon-Ehrlich wager

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Paul R. Ehrlich

• The Population Bomb Revisited "The Population Bomb Revisited", Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, 2009
• Paul R. Ehrlich's faculty web page at Stanford University
• Info on The Population Explosion, the 1990 sequel to The Population Bomb
• Biographical page at the International Center for Tropical Ecology, University of Missouri, St. Louis
• Several online Paul Ehrlich interviews
• "Plowboy Interview" of Paul Ehrlich, 1974 from The Mother Earth News
• Paul R. Ehrlich and the prophets of doom A look at Ehrlich's treatment of exponential growth.
• Ehrlich quotes
• Video of discussion with/interview of Ehrlich by Carl Zimmer on Bloggingheads.tv
• Video: The Dominant Animal 2008-06-27
• Paul Ehrlich talks about Evolution at Commonwealth Club, April 2009