Page "Paul R. Ehrlich" Paragraph 11

Ehrlich's views on the situation have evolved over time, and he has presented a number of different proposed solutions.

However, he always has been a strong advocate of government intervention into population control.

In Population Bomb he wrote, " We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.

We must use our political power to push other countries into programs which combine agricultural development and population control.

" Voluntary measures he has supported include the easiest possible availability of birth control and abortions.

He was not opposed to mandatory population control if necessary, including the suspension of food aid to countries which were considered " hopeless " to feed their populations.

Critics have alleged that he was in favor of forced abortion and sterilization.

However, this is not true.

The Ehrlichs did describe these coercive methods in their 1977 textbook, Ecoscience: Population, Resouces, Environment but they did not endorse them, saying, " A far better choice, in our view, is to expand the use of milder methods of influencing family size preferences, while redoubling efforts to ensure that the means of birth control, including abortion and sterilization, are accessible to every human being on Earth within the shortest possible time.

If effective action is taken promptly against population growth, perhaps the need for the more extreme involuntary or repressive measures can be averted in most countries.

" Today Paul Ehrlich has become more focused on the United States, claiming that it must get its population ( and consumption ) under control as an example to the rest of the world.

He has disavowed some of the what he said in The Population Bomb.

He still thinks that governments should incentivize people to have two or fewer children, for example through high taxes on people who have more.

Ehrlich believes there is an " optimal " human population, given current technological realities.

He believes that policy should be geared toward driving the global population toward that number ( 1. 5-2 billion according to his 1994 estimate ).