The world population is currently doubling about every 40 years. But if you give Simon a break and calculate it at a millionth of the current rate, that is, doubling every 40 million years, for seven billion years there would be more people than there are electrons in the universe. I mean, this is the sort of crap they put out and yet these people are taken seriously. If I believed something like that, they’d throw me out of the National Academy of Science, I’d lose my tenure of Stanford, my colleagues would laugh at me wherever I went (5).It seems he has no problem defending his positions. He also said this in an interview with the associated press in 1990; “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun” (Dossier 2).Today Paul Erlich continues his work as the Bing Professor of Population Studies, Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford and is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford. He also works actively in politics fighting for endangered species and the preservation of genetic resources (USC4).When I read “The Population Bomb” ten years ago it awoke me to a new way of thinking about population and natural resources. Previously I had not given these subjects much thought. Since then it has influenced the way I think, the way I vote and my every day actions with activities like recycling, walking or riding my bike instead of driving. I appreciate the way Paul Erlich explains things in non-scientific terms. I am also impressed with his out spoken nature and activism. It is for these qualities that I consider him an environmental role model....
