Expertise is no shield against failure to see ahead. Paul Erlich, a brilliant academic who has devoted his entire life to ecological issues, has been wrong in nearly all his major predictions. He was wrong about diminishing resources, he was wrong about the population explosion, and he was wrong that we would lose 50% of all species by the year 2000. His lifelong study of these issues did not prevent him from being wrong.
Michael Crichton, State of Fear
Everyday Strange 
I don’t think Erlich was wrong so much as he was off by several decades. I was quite annoyed with Crichton when I read State of Fear (and I love pretty much anything else he ever wrote) because all of these things ARE being proven true, just a bit later than he thought. Perhaps we won’t live to see his predictions come to pass but our children – and their children – most certainly will. By the end of the 21st century, between 20 and 50 percent of all living species on earth will have gone extinct. Anyone over (60?) can see the results and remember different times: just one example: I remember HORDES of monarch butterflies. This summer, I saw 2. This earth wasn’t meant to support billions of people. And I see no way of us going back now. The earth has already seen 5 mass extinction events. So IT will likely survive even if we do not. The difference is that this would be the first mass extinction entirely caused by human beings 😕
LikeLiked by 1 person