Seeking Nature’s Moral Compass: A Tribute to the Legacy of Paul Ehrlich

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• June 16, 2026
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An NPG Forum Paper
by Karen I. Shragg, Ed.D
June 2026

ABSTRACT

This Forum paper is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Paul Ehrlich who passed away in March 2026. He tirelessly championed the warning to humankind that the world was overpopulated and in danger of consuming all of the planet’s limited resources. He was a deeply moral person but was challenged for being just the opposite. His ideas ran counter to the growth goals of our economic systems and our deeply ingrained anthropocentric ways. There is nothing pleasant in his sobering message which rings even truer today. By every conceivable measure we are overrunning our planet with too many people and too much human activity.

His now classic book, The Population Bomb, was a dire warning to humanity. But his message fell mostly on frightened and uneducated ears. Throughout the U.S., our ecological education is spotty at best. If we had a cross-curricular system centered on instilling a deep understanding of how our earth works, Ehrlich’s book would not have seemed controversial when it came out in 1968. It may have been more widely comprehended as a much-needed moral message. Ehrlich was concerned about humanity’s survival on a fragile planet, threatened by our actions and numbers. Even educated Americans don’t like warnings, especially those that seem too big to conquer. We therefore must focus on the fact that there is a positive message embedded in the topic of overpopulation; it offers a pathway to go back to a world that is more favorable to wildlife and demonstrates that conservation is a better pathway forward for all life on earth. It is critical to defend Ehrlich’s legacy in the context of his effort to help the world.

A TRUE CHAMPION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

To those who prioritized social justice and claimed that environmentalism was a luxury that marginalized groups could not afford, Ehrlich had this to say: “Environmental issues are really much more critical for people in minority groups, because they’re the ones, for instance, who are forced to live downwind of the power plants — the rich upwind get the power. They are the ones who will suffer first when the food shortages grow. In fact, they are the ones who will be in general the major sufferers, and are the major sufferers from environmental problems, until of course you get to the point where the problems are so insurmountable that society basically collapses. The idea that it is a luxury position is exactly wrong; it has to be a much greater concern among minorities because they can’t afford to move to the cleanest air to try and stay ahead of all of the problems of the environment. It’s not that the rich can avoid them totally; but when they get environmentally induced diseases, they can afford to have them treated. It is a standard mistake to think of environmental concerns as equivalent to just concern for trout streams. It is clear that some ‘environmentalists’ are only thinking about the environment in terms of cozy surroundings for them and their hobbies. That’s part of it but that’s only a minor part of it; the basics of the environmental movement must be to understand that the ecosystems of this planet support our lives and we are busily destroying them and when we’ve completed the job we’ll be gone too.”¹

When Ehrlich’s book, The Population Bomb, came out in 1968 (two years before the first Earth Day) the global population was about 3.5 billion. When Ehrlich died, our planet’s population had grown to 8.3 billion. Ehrlich was sounding an alarm to help us, but what many heard in his message was a scientific excuse for selective genocide. That knee-jerk reaction could not be further from the truth or his intention. In a world focused on human welfare, his efforts to show how overpopulation itself would be the killer of life fell on deaf ears.

I was in 8^th grade the year his book hit the stands and I read it before I left high school. It made a deep impression on me. But as I made my career in teaching and environmental education, overpopulation took a back seat as there were no clear avenues to work on it. I finally found that I could no longer ignore overpopulation’s impact on everything I cared about, especially the fate of wildlife, so I found several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) where I could serve on the advisory board and learn the ropes of this complex issue. Speaking about it was always a challenge and my invitations to speak dwindled over the years.

Dr. Ehrlich did not just speak about this issue. He didn’t limit his commitment to writing professional articles. He helped to launch the non-profit ZPG (Zero Population Growth) in 1968 which had a clear message. ZPG was effective in spreading their message that humans must control our family size so that we can stop runaway, unsustainable growth. In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, was unafraid to give a platform to the issue. Ehrlich greatly influenced Senator Nelson and had him speak at many Earth Day teach-in events. Nelson used his political platform to bring Ehrlich’s message to a much wider audience. Nelson wisely stated that, “every problem is a population problem.” He too saw overpopulation as foundational to the environmental crisis looming in our cities, waterways and oceans. He was a lone political voice for pointing a finger at uncontrolled human population growth as the main driver of habitat loss, pollution, and resource depletion. He argued that sustainability is necessary for a world of decency and an improved quality of life, therefore overpopulation must be addressed.

Many books followed Ehrlich’s lead, lending their support to his message. Limits to Growth used computer modeling to support Ehrlich’s work. Published in 1972 and written by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and Willam W. Behrens, III, it warned that the exponential economic and population growth would exceed the Earth’s finite resources by the 21^st century.

Ehrlich was a professor at Stanford University who never backed down from his stance, but many backed away from him. The topic eventually became taboo and detoured into the adjacent but vastly different issue of women’s rights. Religious leaders balked at the notion that there could be too many of us, after all, according to their narrative, God had put us here to be fruitful and to multiply. In addition, the U.S. was founded on the growth/religious narrative of Manifest Destiny which promoted the expansion of this country as God’s will. Ehrlich was warning the world to save humanity from a horrible fate and yet he was often painted in the opposite light. He was often portrayed as a Neo-Malthusian pessimist especially after he lost a bet to economist Julian Simon, later known as a Cornucopian optimist. Ehrlich predicted that five precious metals would increase in price over a ten-year span due to overpopulation. Had the bet been over a longer period of time, Ehrlich would have won. His only mistake was putting a fast timeline on the effects of overpopulation.

To bring up overpopulation in the beginning was eye-opening to the public and covered well by the media. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson featured Ehrlich nineteen times. But soon things went undercover. It became feared and demeaned. The closest we came to embracing a world of fewer people came when the Nixon administration set up the Rockefeller Commission to study the impact of population growth on the U.S. and its economy. The report pointed out the detrimental manifestations of growth, but it was shelved when the League of Bishops became aware of it. The Sierra Club was offered a tidy sum to leave the issue off their table, and they did thanks to David Baum. These incidents led environmental groups to shy away from even the word ‘overpopulation.’ Instead, they collectively focused strictly on downstream issues such as land preservation, saving endangered species, and pollution reduction. If a journalist submitted an article covering the issue of overpopulation to one of their magazines, it was rejected. If one tried to talk about it at one of their conventions one could expect to be silenced. I have experienced both. Locally, there were some gains made with eagles and Trumpeter swans, but overall, the march of overpopulation continued to gobble up our resources while making deadly contributions to climate change.

The framing of overpopulation as a pessimistic issue was unfortunate and has been a continuing thorn in the side of overpopulation activists for decades. Technology is another weapon used to counter the argument that the world is burdened by too many of us. Certainly, we can make irrigation rigs and mass transit more efficient and available. Our home appliances have already been built to use less energy. But those efforts cannot keep up with the demand of ever-growing populations.

When I first started advocating for reducing our population the world was growing by 93 million per year. That growth has slowed to just over 70 million, but that is little solace in a world already topping 8 billion. A population of that magnitude puts our planet at least 6.5 billion over our carrying capacity. Our efforts to better and extend human life means that we are stopping nature’s natural controls. Understandably, we do everything we can to extend human life and help every baby to overcome childhood diseases. There are 10.7 million NGOs dedicated to the betterment of human life.² Every decent person wishes to improve the lives of other people, particularly children, but we must recognize that these acts eventually help to increase our overall numbers beyond the earth’s capacity and that we are headed towards more misery, suffering, and early death.

WHY PEOPLE DON’T HEED WARNINGS BY EXPERTS

Psychologists have explained why people do not readily follow warnings from experts. They may not trust the messenger, viewing the experts as elites who they have a difficult time valuing as they may not connect to their lives.hey also weigh the cost of compliance. Is the probable risk greater than the threat to my life? They do a cost benefit analysis in their heads to determine what sacrifices they may need to make.³

If people deeply understood the mechanisms of the earth, those unheeding warnings would have a better chance of being embraced as having a common sense and practical response to our predicament. Still there is the psychology of our self-deceiving brain to prefer the delusions promoted by our corporatocracy, that promoting growth is going to serve us well. In their book, Useful Delusions: The Power & Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain, published in 2021, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler describe our tendency to prefer the comfort of delusion over the harshness of scientific truths. This preference isn’t just because it’s easier, it actually has been naturally selected over time to help us in times of stress. While self-deception can be harmful, they say, it can also serve to help us sustain relationships, maintain our health and allow for more happiness. Vedantam and Messler cited a Mayo Clinic study which demonstrated a 19% increase in mortality when patients were given pessimistic explanations of their conditions rather than told of their condition in a more optimistic way.⁴

The deck is definitely stacked against telling the truth about overpopulation as Ehrlich discovered throughout his life. To combat this, we must couch it in a more optimistic tone while remaining truthful to science. After all, to ignore overpopulation’s wrath is to welcome a collapse of our biosphere.

SEEKING NATURE’S MORAL COMPASS

Nature has a moral compass. It may seem harsh, because its tools for keeping numbers in line with resources include natural disasters, predation, and disease. But from a distance it keeps things in balance. Its laws must be followed to survive. Every species, including humans, must stay in their ecological lane. When any species challenges nature’s carrying capacity laws, they end up in the fossil record along with those who can’t adapt to climate change and environmental disasters. These laws must be obeyed in order to keep resources and natural systems in balance with demand. Poor health, extirpation, and eventual extinction are the punishments for breaking nature’s laws. Her fragile and complex ecosystems have evolved in interconnected ways scientists are still figuring out. Pollution is the by-product of a species elevating growth and manufacturing beyond the ability of nature to absorb waste. Waste accumulates. The polluted air becomes the polluted rain which becomes the polluted ocean and the loss of ocean life. Our narratives of growth and so-called prosperity have taken precedence over nature’s laws. Ehrlich sounded the alarm on this dangerous path, not as an immoral person but as a very moral one.

As an entomologist, Ehrlich knew how to do research and connect the dots of overpopulation to species survival. He backed up his claims with stacks of evidence, but it was not politically digestible in a world married to growth. His assertions ignited many unfounded accusations that he was in favor of genocide and forced sterilizations. The mistake Ehrlich made was that he predicted when things would start to drastically fall apart. His premise was solid but other factors, like the green revolution, have extended our continued growth. Many concerned themselves with how we would go about reducing population instead of recognizing that if we didn’t take charge, nature would end up being the ultimate reducer of human population.

Ehrlich and those in his camp had and still have much to overcome. Overpopulation has many detractors. Our society’s collective deafness on this issue is complicated, but it can be simplified into to five basic reasons: 1) our biological imperative to reproduce combined with our ability to extend life with medical advances, 2) our cultural predisposition for procreation and growth – based on our anthropocentrically/religiously- oriented society, 3) our lack of ecologically-based education, 4) globalization and multi-national corporations requiring growth to keep increasing their wealth, and 5) the deliberate spreading of disinformation based on the misunderstanding of the issue as anti-human.

Climate change deniers enjoy sending out counter information about scientific issues including overpopulation. Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate have quantified the startling and disturbing rise of climate change denial over the past five years in what they call the New Denial or “the departure from rejection of anthropogenic climate change, to attacks on climate science and scientists, and rhetoric seeking to undermine confidence in solutions to climate change.” It is disturbing that unsupportable assertions now make up 70% of all of these claims made on YouTube, up from 35% six years ago, according to their website. The funding behind these efforts is vast and capable of doing the kind of damage that a schoolteacher, even if highly trained, will have a hard time countering.⁵

PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSIONALS NEEDED

Americans like positive and simplified messages. Political slogans that win for candidates are concise and upbeat. Examples are Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” and Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can.” Jimmy Carter asked us to turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater. That didn’t make him popular, even though he was on the right side of history. One of the most effective ads was the one from years ago where a Native American Indian looked out onto a spoiled landscape and a tear slowly ran down his cheek. Environmental writers must use plain language and clever messaging while “keeping it real” as young people say.

Ehrlich’s message was clearly correct, but it has been delivered in a way most Americans do not wish to embrace, wrapped in scientific language and labeled as doom and gloom. He told us that, “Collapse of society is certain to happen in the next few decades.” He also said, “Few problems are less recognized, but more important than the accelerating disappearance of the earth’s biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched.”⁶

There is a positive spin which can be made about overpopulation. First, we have to define overpopulation as humane because it is an attempt to avoid the negative fallout from the over-demand made of limited resources. Addressing overpopulation head on is a humane action intended to avoid pain and suffering. For example, what if the city of Cape Town, in South Africa, had the foresight and wherewithal to halt its population growth back in 1970 when its population was just over 1 million, instead of struggling to find water for its 5 million inhabitants today? Cape Town could have avoided the misery of the water shortages that they are experiencing which have been exacerbated by climate change. The city gets most of its water from dams constructed to catch rainfall runoff from the mountains. Climate change is restricting the amount of rainfall.

Secondly, overpopulation is a shortcut to addressing many areas of concern. Want to save the tiger? Work on overpopulation. Want to decrease carbon emissions? Work on overpopulation. Want to protect the oceans? It’s time to acknowledge that all these issues are connected to the issue of overpopulation.

Population increases occur in two ways. One is just by regular growth. When resources are unlimited, population grows in a J curve pattern. If two people have two children, and those two children live to reproductive age and continue that pattern, it results in population growth in just a few generations. If they have even more children, a country’s population grows faster. The other way for a country’s population to grow is by immigration. That is how most developed countries are growing today as total fertility rates slow down for a myriad of reasons. In the U.S., the education around limits to growth has unfortunately been lost to the demonization of individual migrants in the country illegally which serves the political goals of the current administration. Ehrlich was also demonized as giving oxygen to the anti-immigration movement when he was really an advocate for restricted immigration to prevent a more serious overpopulation problem in the U.S. He was pro-sustainability and therefore promoted the belief that restricting immigration was important to stop the environmental collapse of our country. He stated that reducing U.S. population growth must include a “complementary restriction of immigration,” arguing that immigrants become “super-consumers” who accelerate “local and global environmental deterioration”. The evidence is clear. Since he first supported groups like FAIR (Federation for Immigration Reform), back in 1979, the U.S. grew by 123 million mostly due to immigration. This has put pressure on the need for more infrastructure, the preponderance of more traffic, and the loss of wetlands, wildlands, and wildlife.

The discussion is now mired in the muck of downstream thinking. The current narrative permits two basic scenarios: you are either pro- or anti-immigrant. The issue is more than two dimensional. Our discussions also need to include sustainability and the limited capacity of our country to absorb more people. Those concerned with sustainability are silenced in the cloud of violence perpetrated by those who are said to be criminals and here illegally without any proof.  YES, we love our neighbors. YES, we demand that the rule of law is obeyed and that the laws of habeas corpus should be followed, AND we care about the carrying capacity of our cities, burdened with traffic, pollution and the demand for scarce social services and natural resources. This discussion would have never descended to beyond the reaches of sustainability had we been thoroughly immersed in ecological education. We would understand that the land of amber waves of grain has limits too and as we exceed them with growing numbers of immigrants, we undermine our quality of life.

News reporters daily reflect their ignorance of ecology when they don’t ask how the impact of various news events affect the earth’s systems. They should be doing a much better job of informing the public about the dangers of overpopulation.

THE EDUCATION REMEDY

Of the five hurdles to overcome, our ecological education should be the easiest to tackle. Teaching the basics of limits and the way human activity is harming our environment is nearly absent from our educational systems. There is a lot of noise about how important climate change is to the average American, but I was surprised to learn that countries with fewer resources than the U.S. rank higher in their commitment to climate education, among them Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia. While 80% of Americans rate climate change as a major concern, they are mostly unaware of its mechanisms or what they can do about it. Overall science scores put U.S. students at 24^th in the world and in 2019 nearly half of U.S. teens claimed to have learned “little or nothing about climate change”.⁷

One of the issues is that teachers are not well-versed in ecology either. A Smithsonian-Gallup poll, which surveyed over 2,500 teachers and administrators in spring 2023, found that U.S. teachers also said they have a lack of expertise (74%) and instructional materials (76%) to teach sustainability.⁸

Efforts to remedy this situation have been made by several NGOs such as Population Connection, formerly Ehrlich’s ZPG. It states on their website, “We provide hands-on training to 10,000+ teachers and future teachers annually in Northern America.” Negative Population Growth (NPG) has been involved in educating Americans on the dangers of population growth since its founding in 1972. NPG recently distributed Earth Day materials to more than 1,500 middle and high school educators across the nation as it has been doing since 2010.

If teachers are to be encouraged to teach about anthropogenic climate change, that is only the first step. They also need to include overpopulation as a driver of climate change and that is even harder to get past school boards and those who stand to profit from the use of fossil fuels in the short run.

Paul and his wife, Ann Ehrlich, stated in their book, The Betrayal of Science and Reason, that part of the reason overpopulation is ignored is due to the, “… overall lack of scientific knowledge among United States citizens.”⁹

Imagine that our society was run on the premise of a solid ecological foundation. There would be a great benefit from changing focus from why and who created the earth to how the earth works within our solar system and universe. A holistic curriculum complete with songs, art, literature, and scientific experiments would be fun to teach and a joy to learn. To understand the mechanisms of life is to be filled with awe especially if the usual reductionist scientific approaches are abandoned.

We cannot depend on the work of a few dedicated NGOs to educate students nationwide. We need comprehensive ecological education from pre-school to college in both public and private schools. The focus needs to be on how the earth works not on why or who may have started it all.

It is preferable that all of the lessons be taught in a hands-on manner as much as possible. No matter the grade, students need to be out in the real-world experiencing nature for themselves to understand it organically. An example would be digging in the soil to understand its layers rather than reading about it in a textbook. To understand transpiration of water, in-class experiments are better than a lecture. To comprehend population’s effect on the landscape, students would walk in neighborhoods not yet developed and then compare them to developed neighborhoods, counting wildlife, measuring decibels of noise and interviewing those who live there in order to understand how they experience crowding.

EARTHWORKS SUSTAINABILITY LESSON PLAN EXAMPLES

Preschool

Objective: Children will learn that the earth is a whole planet with three basic elements: land, air, and water.

Method: Sing songs like Little Blue Ball by Douglas Wood, perform plays. There are many nature-based curricula for young people, encouraging exploration of animal tracks, pond water, and soil. The key component is giving children time on their own to explore the natural world.¹⁰

Early Elementary School

Objective: Learn who eats whom (the food web) to understand the nature of predator and prey relationships. Understand basic astronomy and the Earth’s place in the solar system.

Method: Play the food web game. Label children with placards of elements of the food web and toss a ball of yarn between them to physically see their connection. Play games which illustrate the way in which animals that must hunt are connected to those they must eat. Make models of the solar system. Read books and show videos. An example: Who Eats What? The Food Chains and Food Webs, by Patricia Lauber.¹¹

Late Elementary

Objective: Learn about the value of biodiversity by studying the soil cycle and water cycle.

Method: Make compost and turn it into a garden, doing it indoors with light if land is unavailable. Map out a measured plot of land and count the species of ants and other invertebrates in a suburban lot and compare it to a spot in the forest. Teach nature journaling, reading age-appropriate texts inspired by Henry David Thoreau. Require students to know the three highest populated cities and states in the U.S. and the world as well as to be able to list the population of their own city, state, and country.

Middle School

Objective: Learn about different biomes – ocean, forest, and desert – and their similarities and differences.

Method: Adopt a wild animal and trace its survival to ours. Learn about land ethics and the contribution of indigenous cultures to an intimate relationship with the land. Invite in indigenous guest speakers. Read and discuss, A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold.

High School

Objective: Learn about the subject of sustainability and overshoot, locally and globally. Study mammal populations as examples.

Method: Learn how to collect evidence for overshoot, measure traffic jams, increases in cost of living and homelessness. Have students adopt a state to study its population numbers and their impact on wildlife and quality of life. Learn the relationship between population growth and agricultural land and study movements like permaculture and restorative agriculture. Determine if the U.S. is in overshoot using math and resource measurement. Read and discuss books by Henry David Thoreau, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Limits to Growth by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and Willam W. Behrens, III, and of course Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. Bring in panelists to expand the conversation. Discuss why the timeline Ehrlich predicted was postponed.

EARTHWORKS COLLEGE COURSES

As a professor at Stanford University, Ehrlich had a curriculum which could be referenced to outline college-level learning of ecology.

Objective: How the scale of the human enterprise critically affects the environment, the nature and importance of ecosystems, and basic evolutionary theory. Study the relationship between population growth, resource depletion, and environmental impact, reflect on themes of human ecology, the importance of conservation using examples from the field of entomology.

Method: This would be accomplished through lectures, guest speakers, panel discussions, lab work and field study. Students would be required to write papers and speak about the connections between overpopulation and the future endangerment of human and wildlife habitation of the planet.

Universities around the country should adopt Erhlich’s coursework to honor his lifelong dedication to these topics. Back in 2011, Dr. John Lemons, from the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, agreed. He argued that there is an “extremely urgent need to systematically transform U.S. higher education to create an informed citizenry about the scientific, social, political, policy, legal, cultural, and moral dimensions of climate change.” He said that “piecemeal” reform will not be enough and further stated that: “Universities need to urgently, if not radically, respond to the challenges of anthropogenic global climate change by focusing on the complicated intertwined aspects of the scientific, social, political, policy, legal, cultural, and moral dimensions necessary for an informed citizenry.”¹²

A CULTURE OF SUSTAINABILITY

Much needs to be done to overcome the forces that encourage us to dismiss what our ailing planet is telling us. We are not only ignoring the wisdom of Ehrlich, but we are also busy destroying our planet with our destructive wars and addiction to growth. Putting the brakes on our self-destruction seems so out of reach. It begins with conversations that need to be had even if they make us initially uncomfortable, so that we may at least articulate a potential way forward.

The successful implementation of a well-researched and more comprehensive EarthWorks curriculum nationwide would enable future politicians to be better equipped to lead us towards a more sustainable world. We would, as a society, be able to embark on the goal of creating a student body and subsequent culture that would see Ehrlich’s work as common sense rather than controversial. Furthermore, if it was presented as a survival strategy, perhaps the many books and thousands of academic papers that make up Dr. Paul Ehrlich’s life’s work could become our roadmap, rather than a whisper of what might have been had we heeded his heartfelt advice.¹³

For footnotes please refer to the PDF of the paper by clicking here.