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13 Most Ridiculous Predictions Made on Earth Day, 1970
Today is Earth Day — an annual event first launched on April 22, 1970. The inaugural festivities (organized in part by then hippie and now convicted murderer Ira Einhorn) predicted death, destruction and disease unless we did exactly as progressives commanded. Sound familiar? 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
A version of this article was posted last year.
Published in Science & Technology
I don’t remember where I heard or read this but somebody said that a year ago his daughter had no husbands. Now she has one. If this trend continues, in 10 years she will have 11 husbands.
Well, I’m told the laws of nature do continue unabated, but that’s not going to terrify people very much very soon, will it?
Take stuff like this and disco and you know everything you need to know about why people who grew up in the ’70’s turned out the way they did. /sarc/
People must have really taken all that talk about famine to heart and that’s why we are now wringing our hands about an obesity epidemic.
Well Jim, I can give you an answer for just those who have died because of Rachel Carson and the DDT ban: tens of millions. DDT itself has prevented the deaths of at least 500 million from malaria (mostly children) that otherwise would have been inevitable.
Only until the early 1970’s – since then it has killed over 100 Million = bringing the environmentalists to a level only exceeded by the socialists. But I repeat myself. Watermelons are the true threat to humanity.
Thanks for posting this again, Jon.
So…does anyone else see Ed Asner in the burning earth graphic?
Now I do, like Satan in Hell.
I hope revisiting these crazy predictions from the 70s causes people to take the current hysteria over global warming with a grain of salt. The predictions we are hearing today are just as wrong.
I think one of the problems is that the Left mixes radical environmentalism with the more mundane conservation. Most everyone isn’t opposed to recycling or reducing pollution or things like that. But the Enviros spin opposition to their radical agenda as being opposed to the all efforts to just be neat and tidy with the environment. They see it as all or nothing. It’s like the difference between animal welfare and animal rights. Everyone wants doggies and kitties to be treated humanely, but its a far cry from “meat is murder”.
Thanks for an excellent historical insight – I had been pondering the emergence of the watermelon (you know, green on the outside, red on the inside – the thick skin doesn’t translate, though) for some time – you nailed it.
As an aside, I took more joy than I expected from revving up every energy-guzzling item I own during Earth Hour.
Say, isn’t Earth Day celebrated on Lenin’s birthday?
Coincidence? I think not!