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Whenever you criticize something adjacent to my beliefs I'm always bothered, but since we're all biased, I have to be honest and admit that I might only be bothered by the disagreement/criticism itself, rather than the quality of you arguments or the background low-key antagonism towards your targets. This post was very helpful in clearing up the question of what's bothering me. If you managed to make me feel defensive towards Paul Ehrlich of all people, then I think we've found the problem, and it is you.
If you say things like "when someone tells you they're lying", I will be expecting some admission of deception, not run of the mill rationalization of the "even when I'm wrong, I'm right" variety.
Which is probably why he's seems reluctant to concede his broader argument about us eventually running into limits of what our planet can sustain. For people like him the Green Revolution is a bailout, not a permanent solution, or a change of trajectory towards a more sustainable path. Focusing on a specific prediction would be missing the forest for the trees, unless you want to claim that there will always be a new Green Revolution coming to bail us out when we need it.
This part in particular rings true. If he was so wrong, why is every single influential organization, governmental or otherwise, constantly blasting us with propaganda about "sustainability"?
Huh... they were already talking about declining sperm counts in 1995? I'll be...
Given that global population growth is slowing and the global population is likely to peak this century, the ‘green revolution’ is indeed sufficient to feed the projected maximum human population of the earth. So calling it a ‘temporary bailout’ is wrong.
This assumes the slowing of population growth is organic, rather than the product of decades of social engineering by people like Ehrlich.
I see no reason for that assumption, birth rates are dropping even in countries that have never tried outright population control measures, and in turn they do not respond to attempts to increase fertility.
This is still transitory, since it increases selection pressures on the remaining fertile till we reach new resource constraints. Even then, only the ignorant would think that we'd be anywhere close to reaching that limit in this century, or the next, unless we absolutely change or exceed the limits of our biology (which might happen).
When you say "never tried population control" do you mean things like the one child policy, and mandatory sterilization, or propaganda about sex being primarily for pleasure, contraceptives, abortion, "women's empowerment", deconstruction of the family, and deconstruction of various identities?
The former.
I dispute the latter matters all that much because "propaganda" in the other direction has been useless, leaving aside more concrete incentives.
No, propaganda in the other direction has not been useless- red tribe propaganda about how awesome having kids is is probably the main reason for their oddly high fertility rates, and non-haredi Jews in Israel are to my understanding under a very similar propaganda-fertility boost, albeit more about the duty of having children than the joys. Now if that propaganda is obvious lies, or drowned out by anti-natal propaganda, it’s useless. The key is to make good propaganda.
Fair point, but I would like to point out that as propaganda goes, the latter doesn't really scale.
No, Israel doesn’t scale. American country music about how awesome going to your kid’s sports matches is and how women smiling when they hold babies is the most attractive thing about them easily could, though. And it’s not as if eg Japan couldn’t have its own version of Israel’s natal propaganda.
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