[1][2][3][4][5][6] Holdren was previously the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,[7] director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and director of the Woods Hole Research Center.

[9] He trained in aeronautics, astronautics and plasma physics and earned a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1970 supervised by Oscar Buneman.

The bet was centered around a disagreement concerning the future scarcity of resources in an increasingly polluted and heavily populated world.

[16][17][18][19] He testified to the nomination committee that he does not believe that government should have a role in determining optimal population size[20] and that he never endorsed forced sterilization.

In a 1969 article, Holdren and co-author Paul R. Ehrlich argued, "if the population control measures are not initiated immediately, and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.