Posted on 04/14/2020 12:07:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
More than three decades before Greta Thunberg was born — the Swedish environmental activist on climate change — more than 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970.
We now look back at quotes from Earth Day, Then and Now,” by Ronald Bailey, Reason.com. May 1, 2000 of the spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions from Earth Day 1970.
Considering the current doomsday predictions scaremonger activists are verbalizing about global warming that will result in the demise of civilization within the next decade, many of those unscientific 1970 predictions are being reincarnated on today’s social and news media outlets.
Many of the same are being regurgitated today, but the best prediction from the first earth day five decades ago, yes 50 years ago, was that the “the pending ice age as earth had been cooling since 1950 and that the temperature would be 11 degrees cooler by the year 2000”.
The 1970’s were a lousy decade. Embarrassing movies and dreadful music reflected the national doomsday mood following an unpopular war, endless political scandals, and a faltering economy.
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 — okay, “celebrated” doesn’t capture the funereal tone of the event. The events (organized in part by then hippie and now convicted murderer Ira Einhorn) predicted death, destruction and disease unless we did exactly as progressives commanded.
Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — Harvard biologist George Wald
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner
“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
“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.” — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [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
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day
“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.” — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter
“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
“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.” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich
“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.'” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt
“[One] theory assumes that the earth’s cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun’s heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” — Newsweek magazine
“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
History seems to repeat itself as there will be a disproportionately influential group of doomsters predicting that the future–and the present–never looked so bleak. I guess we’ll need to critique the 2020 doomsday predictions in the year 2050 and see if they were any better than those from the first Earth Day 50 years ago.
This piece first appeared on CFACT.org.
Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.
Am continuing to await the new ice age ....
I remember a lot of this, Don’t worry the Ice Age will come back
Friggin’ globalists, socialists and elitists are like pop music: Same tune, same lyrics, same message with a different beat.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Look at all the mileage they got out of them the first time. Why come up with any new cons, when the old ones work so well?
Yes, Ira Einhorn, the dude who killed a girl and put the body in a suitcase. Great intellectual mind there.......................
One thing these control freaks seem to like predicting is famine, which is something they can easily manipulate into happening if they ever get control. It already happens with some of these such regimes.
Take for example if our very own lunatic, AOC, gets her Green New Deal implemented, both petro fuels and most jobs will be eliminated. They will solve this by breaking up the large farms (why not, the big tractors and combines have no fuel). The unemployed will be moved to the newly created small farms and not have the slightest idea what to do.
Zimbabwe killed or ran off their farmers. Pol Pot’s agricultural experiment did not fare well. The Soviets struggled to feed their own when they had such vast amounts of farmland. These are socialist utopian farming operations I can think of off hand, bet there are more.
Any mention of Ira Einhorn who claimed to be the founder of EARTH DAY?
Ask and you will get an “Ira who?
You won’t find Ira Einhorn’s name listed in any of the Earth Day promotional literature, as the organizers have taken great pains to distance themselves from this man, at least since he became better known for composting his girlfriend in a trunk in his closet for a couple of years in the late 1970s.
In 1970 I was not yet 30 and I recall paying as little attention to them then as I do now, which is to say none.
I was in high school.
Yeah, grrrrreta and her pals will NOT like that scenario.
Typical holier than thou ecowankers.
I thought Greta said she had Covid-19? Is she recovered? Or was it a fake sickness?
Earth Day is complete fraud. Greta the Eco-’tard should ask Holly Maddux.
She thought a she had it and recovered.
Al Gore famously suggested that 60% of Florida would be under water from rising sea levels by 1992.
He has made many other completely failed predictions on his way to amassing a $200,000,000 fortune as an environmental doom prophet and board member for “green companies”. He did not even have to stand on a street corner wearing a doomsday sign yelling at passing traffic!
Fact - we produce more food today throughout the world than at any point in our history and we are capable of producing far more than we consume. This is true even in the developing countries where nutrition has never been better in human history thanks to better agricultural practices and the generosity of the developed world.
Fact - we can produce far more oil today than we ever have at any point in human history and we discover new reserves continually with far more of that delicious oil that can be recovered. Could we eventually run out of easily recoverable oil? Possibly, but even the pessimist say that is not for another 100 years. Will technology remain the same and will we still be dependent on oil for transportation?
Fact - the earth is not warming in any measurable way beyond the natural variability in weather and climate. Sea ice has not disappeared. Oceans have not risen. Etc. Etc.
An oldie but goodie on his movie predictions in 2006....
The earth has a fever so why not Greta?
But Greta does claim to have had a mild case and to have recovered after about two weeks.
If her family is nutty enough to not believe in vaccination, it might just have been regular flu or a cold.
It could have been something like that even if she had taken the flu vaccine. She was never tested for covid.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.