Earth Day predictions from 1970.
April 22nd, 2009 . by TexasFred
Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn’t believe Earth Day
predictions of 2009.
I found this piece looking for more quotes similar to those Glenn Beck was doing
when he ran out of time. These were found HERE
“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
I don’t know about you, but my faith in modern eco-science is fully restored!