Paul R. Ehrlich: Quotes about water

Paul R. Ehrlich is American scientist and environmentalist. Explore interesting quotes on water.
Paul R. Ehrlich: 22 quotes2 likes

“The idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic…. Julian Simon, a professor of junkmail marketing, and his kind, think technology will solve everything…. We can use up the Earth then we can just jump into spaceships and fly somewhere else…. Technology does nothing to solve problems of biodiversity or living space or arable cropland…. Fresh water and arable cropland are finite resources…. We are already far beyond what we can support sustainably…. The provincial view you get from someone living in some wealthy American East Coast city is wildly different from reality. Most of the world is tropical, hungry and poor. Visit the developing world and southern hemisphere and you get a very different view of reality.”

Paul R. Ehrlich

Paul Ehrlich and the population bomb

“Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.”

Paul R. Ehrlich

The Population Explosion (1990)

“A series of things have come up since then that have made the problem incredibly grimmer…. The ozone hole… acid rain…. Three hundred million people have starved to death since THE POPULATION BOMB was written. The famines weren’t as large as agriculturists thought they would be… due to the spread of… Green Revolution technology into the poor countries…. What makes us nervous right now is that we’re faced with again having to do something desperate to increase our food production greatly…. In 1965 we knew exactly how to do it, the question was could we deploy it fast enough—Today we have nothing left to deploy—that’s very scary…. As a species we’re not able to live on our income; we’re living on our capital, our deep rich agricultural soils are being destroyed, water is being overpumped, and our biodiversity, our life support system—we’re already far beyond what we can support.”

Paul R. Ehrlich

KQED Radio City Arts and Lectures, San Francisco 1996