Earth Day predictions of 1970.

cnredd · #1 (**permalink**) 04-22-2009, 05:07 PM

Earth Day predictions of 1970

Quote:

For the next 24 hours, the media will assault us with tales of imminent disaster that always accompany the annual Earth Day Doom & Gloom Extravaganza.

Ignore them. They’ll be wrong. We’re confident in saying that because they’ve always been wrong. And always will be.

Need proof? Here are some of the hilarious, spectacularly wrong predictions made on the occasion of Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“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

“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

“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

“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

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “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

Keep these predictions in mind when you hear the same predictions made today. They’ve been making the same predictions for 39 years. And they’re going to continue making them until…well…forever.

Here we are, 39 years later and the economy sucks, but the ecology’s fine. In fact this planet is doing a lot better than the planet on which those green lunatics live.

It's an industry folks...Nothing more; nothing less...

tristanrobin · #2 (**permalink**) 04-22-2009, 06:03 PM

Quote:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

guess we'll never know, since we took a alot of action in the following years

saltwn · #3 (**permalink**) 04-22-2009, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cnredd

Earth Day predictions of 1970

It's an industry folks...Nothing more; nothing less...

The short answer is they did do something.
It's hard to prove what could have taken place if someone actually succeeded in stopping it.
I don't know if the time lines above are exact, but there was some major polution killing us right here in the US.
You could see, taste, feel the steel in the air in Birmingham, Alabama.
Jacksonville, Fla., that "gateway to the South" was a ****e hole.

. I wouldn't alow my dog a drink of water within the city limits!
There were fish on the upper east coast that had sores on them. Before Lady Bird Johnson, our highways were littered with people's household garbage.
A lot of neighborhoods around the country dumped their toilets and such straight into a local body of water.
Factories that had smoke stacks could run wide open day or night for days if they wanted.
Nothing could stop all this until a huge generation of young people said, "Hey let's leave a clean environment for our future."
And, so far, we do.

Mikeyy · #4 (**permalink**) 04-23-2009, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cnredd

Earth Day predictions of 1970

It's an industry folks...Nothing more; nothing less...

This is funny. Most the rivers where Redd lives you could almost walk accross in 1970 from all the crap in them. In Caloifornia we had school closings because the smog alerts were so high. Your eyes would burn from the smog in 1970. So some people in 1970 said we need to stop or we won't survive. And I'll promise you that if we looked back at those times we will find pols on the right saying it was all BS. Its natural smog. Or catalytic converters will kill the auto business. Hell, Dingall was against seat belts. It would trap people in their cars.

zoobie555 · #5 (**permalink**) 05-01-2009, 05:26 PM

"“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist"

Considering that respiratory disease and respiratory infections combined are the third largest killer of humans worldwide every year, below Heart disease and Cancer... THIS PREDICTION HAS ALREADY COME TRUE! Well sort of... the number is actually in the MILLIONS each year worldwide.

zoobie555 · #6 (**permalink**) 05-01-2009, 05:29 PM

"“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"

Also true... It's just a matter of time. This guy didn't give some ridiculously unrealistic timeline such as the year 2000... but with world population doubling every 47 years and currently at 6.5 Billion - how much longer do you s'pose we can continue that without drowning in each other's waste?

zoobie555 · #7 (**permalink**) 05-01-2009, 05:30 PM

How true. Thanfully we won't know what the world WOULD HAVE BEEN LIKE if we hadn't taken actions to prevent some of those possible futures.

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