Paul Ehrlich talks about 'growth disease' and resolving climate change

Ecologist Paul Ehrlich shocked the world in 1968 with the publication of 'The Population Bomb,' which he co-wrote with his wife, biologist Anne Ehrlich.

Forty six years later, Paul Ehrlich says the main thing he got wrong was the impact that the doubling of the world population to 7.2 billion would have on the global climate system.

Dr. Ehrlich says the solution to climate change is universal access to birth control, abortion on demand, and the end to what he calls 'the disease' of growth economics.

He talked this morning on Radio National arguing that population control was critical to resolving the world’s climate change dilemma.

Beneath the Wisteria supporter, University of Melbourne anthropologist, Hans Baer, is also an advocate for humans, particularly those of in the developed world, to control our lust for growth.

Dr Baer is a regular at many Melbourne functions and lectures at which he will inevitably question the idea of endless growth in a finite world.

Paul Ehrlich is currently in Australia to catch a glimpse of one of Australia's rarest birds, the Orange Bellied Parrot, was interviewed this morning on the ABC’s Radio National by environment editor, Gregg Borschmann.