Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future

Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb and a professor of biological studies at Stanford, and Anne Ehrlich, also at Stanford, are angered by what they perceive as deliberate efforts to subvert media interest in pressing environmental issues. They suggest that the planet is in real peril from overpopulation, depletion of the ozone layer, global warming, and loss of biodiversity, and that each of these threats is confirmed by solid scientific research. And yet, they suggest, these once-hot media issues have been diminished in the public imagination by a determined backlash from anti-environmental groups. What riles the Ehrlichs is that this discrediting of the work of serious biologists has been achieved through pseudoscientific counter evidence--often the output of some politically motivated foundation--examples of which the authors methodically examine and refute.