By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people.
Paul R. EhrlichToo many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people.
Paul R. EhrlichIn ten years [i.e., 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.
Paul R. EhrlichThe main thing is, and of course this is a pedant talking, we should start our education on these issues in kindergarten. Instead of saying, "See Spot run," we ought to say, "See the plant grow in the sun." We ought to explain what runs the weather in the third or fourth grade to start out with.
Paul R. EhrlichI thought if the climate was heating that CO2 was the only forcing, and it would be late in the century before we had trouble. Now that we know about the other half of the forcing, it's obvious that the trouble is coming much sooner.
Paul R. EhrlichSometimes I think the Congress feels that if you only decided tomorrow to switch to wind power that in two years we'd be getting 80 percent of our electricity from wind power. It's nonsense. Normally it takes 20 to 30 years after a new technology is demonstrated and deployed before it powers even 15 or 20 percent of the grid. There's this long lag time, and we haven't even decided which directions to go.
Paul R. Ehrlich