Hmm.

Reason: Why do you think people still listen to Ehrlich? One can go back and read his doomsday scenarios and see that he was wrong.

Borlaug: People don’t go back and read what he wrote. You do, but the great majority of the people don’t, and their memory is short. As a matter of fact, I think this [lack of perspective] is true of our whole food situation. Our elites live in big cities and are far removed from the fields. Whether it’s Brown or Ehrlich or the head of the Sierra Club or the head of Greenpeace, they’ve never been hungry.

I wonder whether, thirty years from now, we’ll be shaking our heads in wonder at the predictions now being made about imminent doom from global warming. World starvation didn’t happen the way Ehrlich and others were certain it would. Y2K was a bust.

Personally I have decided I have enough to do to manage my own little leaky boat. The rest of you - those who are so inclined - can worry about the big picture.