It simply means that we need to make adjustments and to utilize science and technology to their fullest in order to resolve these threats.įurther, rather than extrapolate wildly and bring forth doomsday scenarios, we should bring forth data and facts to support our arguments. And while challenges such as climate change should be taken very seriously, the fact that these challenges exist does not mean that humanity is doomed. Humanity has weathered challenges and difficulties en route to coming up with amazing technological and medical innovations that have improved the quality of life for billions of people. While it is possible for these horrific scenarios to come true, it does not mean that these scenarios are destiny. Even if a broken clock is right twice a day, we shouldn’t base the future of humanity on such faulty thinking. I suppose that supporters of this sort of doomsday thinking will say in response that even though Ehrlich has been wrong for decades, he will one day be right. None of his Malthusian predictions even came close to being true. Looking at this statement more than 50 years later, Paul Ehrlich wasn’t just wrong, he was completely wrong. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.” In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.
A less obvious reason is also because some well-meaning influential people have been fabulously wrong and have continued to double-down on being wrong over the years.īiologist Paul Ehrlich famously said in 1968 that “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. One of the reasons why doomsday thinking has managed to remain a part of our zeitgeist is because the entertainment industry is addicted to it, constantly proliferating nightmarish scenarios of technology being a destructive force hell-bent on the devastation of humanity and the world. There are many reasons why these dreadful scenarios continue to exist in peoples’ minds. Visions of mass starvation, billions of people living in deplorable conditions, and wars over resources, help fuel the popularity of this objection. However fascinating these sorts of overly dramatic, sensational Hollywood scenarios may seem to some people, believing in the inevitability of these scenarios would be ignoring the countless ways that science and technology have allowed us, time and again, to exceed our limitations, improve health outcomes, and create a better environment for humanity to thrive in. Indeed, this objection in particular is rather harmful not just because it appears to advocate for suffering and death, but also because it appears to be a valid objection on a surface level. Of all the objections to life extension, one of the most pernicious is that there are too many people on Earth.
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