Professor Paul Ehrlich drops a bomb on coal-loving politicians, calling for action on climate change
SA will not be liveable in 30 years, warns Professor Paul Ehrlich – a renowned scientist who’s been predicting a collapsing world for more than half a century.
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Now is exactly the right time to talk about climate change and politicians should “stop sucking their thumbs and do something”, says acclaimed scientist Professor Paul Ehrlich, 87, author of the best-selling book The Population Bomb.
The visiting Professor Ehrlich points the finger at that “very stable imbecile in your government waving a coal chunk around”, who was worshipping a fossil fuel that caused global warming, drought and more extreme fire weather at a time when the focus should be on renewable energies.
“(Emissions are) escalating upward toward a world in which, certainly, South Australia will not be liveable,” said the Stanford University conservation biology professor, whose 1968 book predicted worldwide devastation from overpopulation.
“Wild guess – in three or four decades, primarily from it becoming too hot. I think collapse is under way, with kakistocracy spreading.”
“Kakistocracy” is defined as government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.
“There’s going to be heads on pikes before this is over. Look at the evening news, in every place, people are rioting and so on, they’re very unhappy with their state,” he said.
“We’ve talked for a long time about the coming collapse.”
Scientists agree humanity is the major factor in the climate disaster and the sixth wave of extinctions.
Debate only exists over the timing and the extent of the damage.
“I don’t have any real hope, but I don’t see any choice but to keep trying,” Professor Ehrlich said.
Projections for warming and the consequences from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were on the conservative side because “they like consensus and don’t want to be shown to be wrong”, meaning the truth could be much worse, Professor Ehrlich said.
“Even though the scientific community has known we’re headed for collapse for decades and has said it repeatedly, we’re not doing anything,” he said.
“Why isn’t anyone doing anything about it? We know more than enough to know what direction we need to be going and what we need to be trying.”
Professor Ehrlich says tackling climate change must include reducing the population, currently estimated by the worldometers population clock as 7.7 billion people.
“It’s got to be shrunk humanely,” he said.
“The way to start is to give absolutely full opportunity and full legal rights and so on to women everywhere and make sure that everybody has modern contraception and safe backup abortion, that’s just ground zero.”
The problem comes back to the fact “we’re a small group animal that is struggling to live in groups of billions” on a planet with limited resources.
Professor Ehrlich believes human civilisation is on the brink of collapse. But it’s impossible to know what the future holds because there are so many possibilities.
If it’s “the debt pyramid that goes down” then some parts of the electricity network may still function.
“Then post-collapse society may learn from our mistakes and design a monetary system that doesn’t require growth.”
But if at the other extreme a large scale nuclear war occurs, life may be far more difficult.
“The big issue to our colleagues at least is: Will there be enough left after the collapse for a reset?” he said.
But take heart, there will still be some simple pleasures:
“You’ll still be able to ferment things and you’ll still be able to have sex so there’ll be something to do.”
Professor Ehrlich is in Adelaide visiting his friend and co-author, Flinders University Professor Corey Bradshaw.
He will hold talks at Parliament House next week.