What was once Earth Day has now morphed into Earth Hour and Earth Week. The success of the celebration can only be explained by the fact that no one ever bothers to go back to check the accuracy of the eco-wackos’ past predictions.
For example, the predictions made at the first Earth Day in 1970 were wrong. No, wrong isn’t a strong enough word. They were spectacularly wrong. Let’s cover all the tenses and say they were wrong, they are wrong, and then make our own prediction and say they will be wrong in the future.
Jim Morrison, gone. Elvis Presley, gone. Michael Jackson, gone. But none of them were killed by the environment.
Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, remarkably wrong predictions made on Earth Day 1970.
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
Leisure suits are gone, but the Earth is still here
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Sadly, vegans have outlived the Vega.
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
Today, Earth Day, the eco-wackos will surely get their day moment in the spotlight and their soundbites on the nightly news. They’ll predict a future even grimmer than they predicted 41 years ago.
And they’ll be just as wrong 41 years from now.
Source: Reason.com
Wade Boggs Red Sox Jersey
Hughes told the National Assembly that 2016 will see commencement of the implementation of the Roadmap.
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The environmental movement should be seen for what it has become, a haven for socialist/marxist/communist types since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I also like how we get the “We only have 10 years…” BS every year, for the last 40 years. These are people who need to go away.
Marxists have always loved their 5 & 10 year plans. Keeps people from realizing that it’s bullshit today.
Only ten of those had dates.
The claim about pollution was not that far from the mark. In the US, we do lose approximately 30,000 people each year due to respiratory problems from coal plant air pollution. Take that worldwide, and we probably are losing a few hundred thousand each year. Otherwise, it is, as we see these days, wild guessing.
[…] Fifteen Foolish Forecasts: How did environmentalists get it so wrong on Earth Day 1970? […]
People say to me, smoking will kill you… I say so will crossing the street, eating mcdonalds, flying, driving. I sat in the sun two days ago and got myself a nice little sunburn, a lady in line at Walgreens says to me, aren’t you worried about skin cancer? I say to her if I sat around worrying about all the things they say are bad for me or will kill me I might as well bubble wrap myself and stay locked in a closet. They just don’t get it, all so afraid of death or the world ending… live morons, LIVE! Someday I want to die riding my horse with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I tell my kids if they come to visit and the horse isn’t in the barn follow the trail to the burnt spot in the field that’s where I’ll be very happily dead. Hopefully if I don’t die too quickly I can put out the potential forest fire with my Ziegenbock! Made in Texas for Texans! Whoo Hoo ~!~!
I love trash any thing dirty or dingy or dusty thats my motto know how to anger a lib KEEP THE EARTH DIRTY ! LOL. I have old rust cars stacked up dripping oil everywhere I dump freeon into the river and If I could I would buy radiation to sprinkle on my lawn HAHAHA stupid libs eat that!
scientist used to believe that bugs came from garbage ,the world was flat,periods was contagous,and leeches cured cancer.They are WRONG WRONG WRONG and will alway be wrong.
I got strait C+ in Mr.Davis science class both years I was in it and I know more then scientist.
WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!
Well, no shit sonny, the day we are born we start to die. Some a little sooner, some a little later, the end result of life is the same.
I already did once. It wasn’t that bad. Didn’t hurt at all until the paramedics revived me.
My Gremlin is still parked in the garage! Needs a complete make-over. I’ve been TRYING to tell all these young whippersnappers that this climate change is an old tune!
Kelly-
You are absolutely right. I had the same thoughts reading some of the posts above. However the media typically only reports the silly inflammatory stupid ideas that gets said not the reasonable rational approaches to problem solving. I am tired of the extremist points of view on both sides. No one wants to be reasonable, patient and sane. I guess that is no fun.
The environment is cleaner, there is plenty of oil to last for hundereds of years, cars are perhaps 1000 times cleaner than they were in the 1970’s. All we need now is leadership and an inspired vision for the future. Hopefully one borne from hope and positive thinking not fear desperation and fatalism.
Well I gotta say this little essay is an sterling example of the different worlds conservatives and progressives seem to live in nowadays. I mean, do any of y’all so busy twisting your elbows to pat yourselves on the back happen to remember in between your nostalgia for old cars and your glory days, that in 1969 the Ohio River was so polluted in CAUGHT FIRE? Ring a bell, anyone, anyone? And that was just the most blatant example of the horrible pollution that so common then.
If any of you went back and read the quotes you’re bashing, you’ll notice how many of them say how horrible things will be UNLESS WE CHANGE. And guess what, e did change. We passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act – and you can bet your sweet ass that if we hadn’t America damn well would be the wasteland that was predicted. Those laws didn’t solv everything, but they stopped the worst of the worst.
The really sad thing is that back then partisanship wasn’t so all-consuming that the right would blot out basic facts if they contradicted their talking points. It was a Republican president who signed those Acts into law, because he could open his eyes and actually see they were needed. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to have a real discussion about environmental issues with conservatives because of just sort of willful ignorance everyone here seems so proud of.
So you think the Clean Air and Water Acts kept civilization from collapsing and stopped mass starvation and stopped the deaths of 100-200 million per year? And you think it stopped global cooling?
Perhaps you need to go back and read those quotes again. Those people were making crap up then and they’re making crap up now. But then, so are you.
What ‘crap’ do you think I’m making up? Are you going to claim the Ohio River DIDN’T catch fire? Do you think that if we had kept polluting in the same ol’ way throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s the environment would be no different than it is today? No, neither of those are rhetorical questions, I’d like to know your answer.
Yes, I did look at the quotes. And a whole lot of them start with things like “If present trends continue” or “Unless action is taken” – did you notice that, at all? And yeah, some of the direst predictions didn’t come true, thankfully. On the other hand here HAS been mass starvation and famine in the world since 1970 due to drought, soil depletion, population growth etc. Maybe you might remember a bit of that? Or maybe because it wasn’t happening in America it just doesn’t count for you. Just another example of some conservatives not wanting to look up from their manifestos and see the world around them, it appears.
One last ting ‘global cooloing’ is a bugaboo that a bunch of right-wing demagogues have latched onto to try and invalidate the blatant evidence that the planet is warming up. Yes, maybe there was some discussion about it in the 70’s, but nothing like the world-wide studies and fact-finding that has been done that support global warming evidence. But here, one last question – WHY exactly do you think that dumping billions of tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere while simultaneously destroying huge swaths of the ecosystem that would absorb those gasses, such as forested land, WOULDN’T effect the climate? Seriously, these is really basic science here, and I have yet to hear logical answer to this simple question from the climate-change-isn’t-real crowd.
How do you explain the fact that “some discussions” about globull cooling in the 60’s (get your facts straight before you spew) got us unleaded gasoline, higher electric bills due to more regulations on generating plants, much higher costs for steel and copper due to the increased regulations on steel mills and copper smelters, job losses in our country due to those same regulations, just to name a few problems we have endured because of idiots who are so dumb as to think we mere mortals have anything to do with the climate on our world.
There is no such thing as an American made automobile anymore. The correct term would be an “automobile assembled in America using parts manufactured in various foreign countries”. The same can be said for most of the steel, aluminum and copper used in our construction industries. Most of it is processed in China, Japan or India then shipped here. Those countries are having an economic boom while our economy is heading to the shitter.
You think our puny efforts to clean up the air makes any difference in the scheme of things? I can show you close to 2 billion people who are laughing their ass off at your stupidity. They live in China and India, they are spewing crap into the air far faster than we can clean up our own air, they are laughing all the way to the bank.
Grow up, give your iced peppermint white chocolate mocha to the kids and smell the real coffee. All your efforts to “clean up” our planet mean nothing when the rest of the world is laughing at you. In fact, the majority of us working Americans are laughing at you eco-freaks too. You are just too damn dumb, or deaf, to notice the noise.
Been to China? They are choking on the way to the bank. You can barely breath in many of their industrial cities. When I was there in 2006, 9/10 of the most polluted cities in the world were in China. I am not sure if they improved or other places got worse because now they are like 5/10. Strange to regularly see deformed people. Abject poverty beyond what we can imagine in USA too….China is the right-wingnut-wet-dream. No safety nets. No privacy. No environmental laws. Lead-based candy for the tots.
I am ashamed of the ignorance of my fellow countrymen. Maybe they should travel the world more?
It’s not the right-wingnut wet dream — it is the Statist’ wet dream. It is the culmination of crony capitalism, and thanks to *both* parties our society has gotten out of control. The shakedown artist on the left is in charge now, but replacing him with another shakedown artist isn’t our intention. As to cleanup of the left — that’s your problem, and I suggest that first you deign to notice it, and then you should get to cleaning it up.
Until then, you’re just the tool of a different FUD-spinner.
I too am ashamed of the ignorance of my fellow countrymen, especially those that think like you.
Don’t you get it? Did you miss the whole point of my post? We have made great progress cleaning up our own environmental messes but we have went past the balance point so far that it is now hurting our economy.
What has China and India been doing in the meantime? Spewing more crap into the atmosphere in one day than we will in a year. What makes you eco-freaks think our puny efforts to “halt globull warming” is going to make any difference in the whole sceme of things? Do you think a magic bubble will somehow form over our country, because we are so eco-friendly, and it will protect us from all the gunk the rest of the world is spewing into the atmosphere and dumping into the oceans? Are ya’ll really that damn dumb?
You have been to China, I have visited Mexico City many times on business. You don’t breathe the air in Mexico City, you have to chew on it a while before inhaling. Do you think the citizens of Mexico give a shit about globull warming? Of course not, they are trying to earn a living. They lie and cheat on their taxes, just like most working Americans do, to keep the government out of their pockets.
You have visited China so think about the difference in the “classes” of people. Rich, poor. No middle class to speak of. I live in the southwest and I see the results of Mexico’s “two class” system every day. The rich get richer and the poor haul ass across our border to try to feed their families. No middle class to speak of.
What does this have to do with America you ask? It has everything to do with America and our way of life you dimbulb! EPA regulations here have put money into the pockets of millions of people living in other countries, especially their ruling elite. Our own ruling elite, that you sheeple keep electing, get richer every day while the laws they pass force small businesses out of business.
Do you really think the Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey kind of super rich people in our country give a crap? Sure they do, as long as it doesn’t have an effect on their bottom line. When stupid rules and regulations start to hurt what they carry in their wallet they will move jobs to countries like, SUPRISE, Mexico, India and China.
The rich will get richer, the poor will stay poor, and we middle class Americans will become a thing of the past. All because of you, and the fools like you, that keep thinking our elected elite know what is better for us than we do.
Heck TNEB-
Mormons have known since before my lifetime that the world was coming to an end, just ask them and they’ll show you their food storage and guns to prove it.
I notice you make no mention of the dozens of times in the last 100 years that conservatives have cried that some Democrat program or other would lead straight to socialism in America, and then when those programs passed anyway, nothing like that happens.
Nice reporting. You’re all over other media sources for calling out isolated instances of conservatives doing something wrong without talking about numerous other times the left has done the same thing. Nice hypocrisy.
I’ve got a cousin that considers herself a Christian conservative activist; and is absolutely CONVINCED that the rapture is coming in the next month, and all hell will break loose. My brother-in-law, a back to the land granola head, is totally persuaded that the ensuing environmental meltdown will lead to much the same situation. I’ve met tea party activists that believe that our fiscal situation is bound to lead to eventual anarchy, and that we should start stockpiling food and guns. All have legitimate concerns that should be addressed (some with science, some with psychotherapy), but when so many people are turning negative about humanity’s prospects, you have to wonder if it won’t just turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Just out of curiosity, Mike, which Democrat program has ever “passed away”? Welfare? Food Stamps? The NEA? The EPA?
I mean, if you’re going to make a statement like that, you should, at least, back it up with some facts.
The article simply re-printed statements that were made. It didn’t make any claims.
Regarding the “hypocrasy” statement: We’re all hypocrits. Anyone that says he isn’t is a dirty liar. It’s part of what makes us human and what makes this site possible.
Nothing happens?! But it HAS lead straight to socialism… look around! (Were you attempting sarcasm?)
Just look! See the government handing out money, taking over companies, implementing Obama-care, interfering with business, with daily lives, trying to run various aspects of the economy, etc. Institute Social Security and people think government owes you a great retirement — it was SUPPLEMENTAL, people. From medical care for the elderly it’s now turned into medical care for everybody – but by the government rules.
In addition to all the federal programs foisted on the people and the states, there are all the people who think the federal government isn’t taking enough from the people who “have” and giving it to the “have-nots” via government programs and just about everyone believes he or she is a “have-not”! Even at conservative & republican events I hear people saying the government should take care of this, that, and the other thing! People don’t even know what socialism IS anymore they’re so used to it.
@mike Kirby
Damn, I wish I had seen your post when you first submitted it.(speaking of “dumb as a bag of hammers”) Just what type of system do you think we are living in right now? Do you think that this is a free and open capitalist system? Government takes ~30% of the income of less than 50 % of the population(the rest pay nothing), then they use it to pay for Government controlled education, Government owned and controlled banks, Government subsidized, corporate farms, Government pay for the stupid and lazy to stay single and have as many Government subsidized offspring as they want, Government subsidized healthcare for those same parasites. We have Government subsidized artist and musicians. I would say that all of the conservative caterwauling had a serious and legitimate purpose.
Why don’t you just go back to sleep and let those of us who are, at least partially aware, take care of the world as best we can!
Thirty percent? What country are you living in? I’d love to only give thirty percent.
Unfortunately, none of the predictors of any of these events was available for comment. They all died of drug overdoses or in drunken-driving accidents.