But the warnings were completely wrong. Ehrlich predicted that one to two billion people would die from starvation in the 1970s. He was off by much more than 99 percent. He claimed that by 1980, the life expectancy of the average American could be forty-two years. In 1980, it reached seventy-four years. Los Angelinos didn’t need gas masks for air pollution but instead breathed easier in the 1980s because of technological breakthroughs like the catalytic converter and stricter environmental regulations. The world did not end.
