Hysteria! Betcha Ayawk (AOC) knows nothing of this relatively recent history, but the predictions of doom don't change much.
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
Well, it was Walter Cronkite, the same guy who declared, after we wiped the VC and NorthViets off the map during the Tet Offensive, that We lost.
ReplyDeleteWalter was nothing but a slick used-car salesman reading the news.
And never forget Ira Einhorn, organizer of the first Earth Day and murderer of his wife.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/32073-forget-earth-day-remember-murderer-einhorn-its-co-founder-and-the-bogus-claims-of-his-movement
Looks like we found Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's "dimwit" genes origins.
ReplyDeleteI remember the first earth Day, I was in high school in Torrance Calif, we sat on the lawn while people talked at us about smog while wearing gas masks...
ReplyDeleteI also remember that most days I could not see the big Union Bank building out our living room window. The smog, the air pollution was real.
My Dad got transferred and I left LA & SoCal.
Many years later I was back, driving thru LA and son of a bitch if LA isn't surrounded by mountains!
I lived there from the summer of 1966 to the summer of 1970 and never knew there were mountains...
They go to far these days (money is involved) but there is a point to all this back in the beginning.
Ya think 1966 LA was bad. I lived in a small town in Ireland a number of years ago when the only source of heat in every house was a fireplace that burned bituminous coal. Got a temperature inversion and it was like the whole town was situated in a smelly bowl of whipped cream.
DeleteI don't think anyone's denying that pollution had bad effects, especially at some times and in particular places, the idea is that their linear predictions based on a few small observations never came to pass. If you could bet how wrong they'd be, you'd be rich.
DeleteThere's a concept in industry called Pareto optimization. Pareto was the economist who said 20% of the causes create 80% of your problems. So you gather data, find what the 20% is and fix those. Now you have a new 20% causing 80% of the problems, but the number of problems is much smaller. You repeat this a few times and things are much, much better. Add to that innovation creating new ways of doing things that produce less defects, and companies go from having 10% of their products bad to having tenths of 1% bad.
So the EPA turned the crank on Pareto optimization a few times, and now they're worried about pollution from lawn mowers. When a small engine used once a week, (or less - in most of the country) is your big problem, things are far, far better than 1966 LA. Another example is the levels of ozone they want to regulate from factories is lower than the level in the air in some National Parks. We're going to make factories cleaner than Yellowstone or Yosemite?