The Unprecedented Demographic Boom and Bust
Adapted from chapter two of Sleeping on a Volcano: The Worldwide Demographic Decline and the Economic and Geopolitical Implications
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. Opening with the line “The battle to feed all of humanity is over” Ehrlich argued that the increase in fertility rates and the accompanying surge in population that was the baby boom meant that “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”
In retrospect, we know this did not happen. But to be fair to Ehrlich — the scale of the baby boom was tremendous and his prediction was not unreasonable. The enormous increase in world population did not result in worldwide hunger as Ehrlich predicted, largely because of the work of Norman Borlaug, “the man who saved a billion lives .”
Norman Borlaug was the father of the Green Revolution in agriculture. His development of high yield and disease resistant wheat strains prevented worldwide hunger and allowed the planet to feed the massive increase in population. In acknowledgement of the profound impact of his work, Borlaug was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal. Without the increase in crop yields from Borlaug’s work the worldwide population explosion that was the baby boomer generation would have undoubtedly led to…
