Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford butterfly scientist who wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, told us we were doomed. Here are some of his predictions:

&#8226 The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death.” (1968)
• “Smog disasters” in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
• “I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” (1969)
• “Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” (1976)

Of course, none of that has occurred, and still Ehrlich holds his prestigious seat at one of America’s great universities. No doubt inspired by Ehrlich, James Lovelock has written The Vanishing Face of Gaia, his warning to the world that “climate change is spinning us into a hot world, where billions will starve and whole ecosystems will collapse.”

I won’t be around 40 years from now, but I’ll make a bet that his predictions hold up about as well as Ehrlich’s.