Paul Ehrlich wrote one of the most famous and bestselling books of the 20th century. It was called The Population Bomb. It was 300 pages of doom and gloom. The planet was being destroyed because human beings were reproducing like Norwegian field mice. It was a Darwinian nightmare leading the species inexorably back to a Neanderthal subsistence-level existence.

We learned this from the book’s memorable and often-quoted, apocalyptic first sentence: