Ah, the politics of the sixties. Openness to other cultures. Harmony with nature and -- hysterical overpopulation screeds?...
Ah, the politics of the sixties. Openness to other cultures. Harmony with nature and -- hysterical overpopulation screeds?
From Stanford environmentalists and biologist Paul Ehrlich's 1968 classic, The Population Bomb:
The streets seemed alive with people. People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, hand horn squawking, the dust, noise, heat and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect. Would we ever get to our hotel? All three of us were, frankly frightened.
People people people everywhere -- ew and eek!
Tip o' the hat to libertarian Ron Bailey at Reason on-line who helpfully adds:
I wonder how Ehrlich survives a taxi ride down Broadway in Manhattan where the population density was nearly 70,000 people per square mile in 1970, (New York City, 26,000 per square mile) compared to Delhi's 29,000 per square mile in 2007? Like many another ideological environmentalist, Ehrlich confuses poverty with overpopulation.
Bailey quotes Ehrlich one last time:
We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.
