Elon Musk Says This Really Popular Book On Population Crisis Is The 'Most Damaging Anti-Human Thing Ever Written'

Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk said “The Population Bomb” — a 1968 book on overpopulation — written by U.S. biologist Paul Ehrlich is the “most damaging anti-human thing ever written.”

What Happened: Musk’s comments were made in concurrence with a post by clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson who said Ehrlich “has been famously wrong about everything he has predicted for six decades.”

Peterson also shared a CBS News link to “60 Minutes.” The TV news magazine explored “The Vanishing Wild” as one of the subjects in its most recent episode. 

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Ehrlich, now 90 years old, told CBS’ Scott Pelley — “humanity is not sustainable. To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you'd need five more Earths. Not clear where they're gonna come from.”

Referring to the "Population Bomb," Pelley said he was alarmed back when the book came out and is still alarmed at overpopulation.

Why It Matters: Ehrlich had warned in his book that overpopulation would trigger widespread famine but he had been proven wrong about that as the green revolution mitigated that scenario, noted CBS News.

The scientist’s other predictions reportedly include greenhouse gases melting polar ice and humanity overwhelming the wild.

Recently, Musk said ape expert Jane Goodall’s take on the human population is “the death of humanity.”

Musk has said in the past that population control due to low birth rates is a “much bigger risk” to civilization than global warming. He’s also expressed the view that humans “are absurdly concentrated on a tiny percentage of Earth’s surface.”

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Photo courtesy: Thomas Hawk on Flickr