Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges
Nuclear disaster or plague likely unless population shrinks and
natural resources are reassigned to poor, says Prof Paul Ehrlich
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 April 2012 06.19 EDT The world’s
most renowned population analyst has called for a massive
reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to
be redistributed from the rich to the poor. Paul Ehrlich, Bing
professor of population studies at Stanford University in
California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book
in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London
which this morning said that physical numbers were as important
as the amount of natural resources consumed. The optimum
population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical
ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion
people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9
billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the
Guardian. “How many you support