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Critics have disputed Ehrlich's main thesis about overpopulation and its effects on the environment and human society, and his solutions, as well as some of his specific predictions made since the late 1960s. A common criticism concerns Ehrlich's alarmist and sensational statements and inaccurate predictions, leading economist [[Thomas Sowell]] to call out Ehrlich as being "consistently wrong on so many things".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEc4YbQQX0|title=The vision of the anointed — with Thomas Sowell (1995) | THINK TANK|date=8 December 2019 |via=www.youtube.com}}</ref> [[Ronald Bailey]] of ''[[Reason (magazine)|Reason]]'' magazine has termed him an "irrepressible doomster ... who, as far as I can tell, has never been right in any of his forecasts of imminent catastrophe."<ref name=Reason /> On the first [[Earth Day]] in 1970, he warned that "[i]n ten years 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."<ref name=Reason>{{Cite web | title=Cracked Crystal Ball: Environmental Catastrophe Edition | url=http://reason.com/blog/2010/12/30/cracked-crystal-ball-environme | work=reason.com – Free minds and free markets | publisher=Reason Foundation | access-date=4 March 2013 | author=Ronald Bailey | date=30 December 2010}}</ref><ref name=foxnews>{{Cite news| title=Eight Botched Environmental Forecasts |url=https://www.foxnews.com/science/eight-botched-environmental-forecasts | date=December 30, 2010 | author=Maxim Lott | work=FOX News | access-date=2015-10-31 | quote=Again, not totally accurate, but I never claimed to predict the future with full accuracy}}</ref> In a 1971 speech, he predicted that: "By the year 2000 the [[United Kingdom]] will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people." "If I were a gambler," Professor Ehrlich concluded before boarding an airplane, " I would take even money that [[England]] will not exist in the year 2000."<ref name=Reason /><ref name=foxnews /> When this scenario did not occur, he responded that "When you predict the future, you get things wrong. How wrong is another question. I would have lost if I had had taken the bet. However, if you look closely at England, what can I tell you? They're having all kinds of problems, just like everybody else."<ref name=Reason />
Ehrlich wrote in ''The Population Bomb'' that, "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."<ref name="Population Bomb" /> In 1967, Ehrlich called to cut off emergency food aid to India as "hopeless".<ref name="Paying the Piper">{{cite journal |last1=Ehrlich |first1=Paul R. |title=Paying the Piper |journal=New Scientist |date=Dec 1967 |issue=14 |page=655}}</ref> This position was later criticized, as India's food production subsequently skyrocketed through the [[Green Revolution in India]], and its per capita caloric intake rose significantly in the following decades, even as its population doubled.<ref name=lomborg>{{Cite book |last1=Lomborg |first1=Bjørn |title=The skeptical environmentalist: Measuring the real state of the world |date=2002 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0-521-01068-9 |page=350-1 |title-link=The Skeptical Environmentalist}}</ref>
During the 1960s and 70s when Ehrlich made his most alarming warnings, there was a widespread belief among experts that population growth presented an extremely serious threat to the future of human civilization, although differences existed regarding the severity of the situation, and how to decrease it.<ref name="Gardner" /><ref name=Leonhardt>{{Cite news | last=Leonhardt | first=David | title=Lessons From a Famous Bet | url=https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/lessons-from-a-famous-bet/ | access-date=24 October 2013 | newspaper=The New York Times | date=September 30, 2013}}</ref>
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