Ehrlich’s 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” first brought him notoriety. It asserted that widespread famines and mass starvation would doom huge swaths of mankind because the world’s population was growing too rapidly. “The battle to feed humanity is over,” Ehrlich wrote. “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”