50th Anniversary of Earth Day – Original Earth Day 1970 Predictions

Predictions included mass starvation, resource depletion, extinctions and a new ice age.

 

50th Anniversary of Earth Day

Original Earth Day 1970 Predictions

By: George Noga – April 5, 2020

           Imagine that on the original Earth Day in 1970 you had a crystal ball and could foresee the state of humanity and the environment a half century later – in 2020. Here’s what you would write: “Billions of people will be lifted out of poverty and extreme poverty will be ending. Although population will double, food will be plentiful and produced with a smaller environmental footprint. Starvation will be replaced by obesity as the major problem. Natural resources will be more plentiful than ever as proven by falling prices. In short, virtually every measure of environmental and human wellbeing will be the best it has been since 1970 and is getting better all the time!”

Predictions by Scientists and the Media Made on Earth Day 1970

Dr. Paul Erlich – Stanford University:Population will outstrip the small increases in food supply we make. Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years. Four billion people, including 65 million Americans, will perish in the great die-off.”

Dennis Hayes – Organizer Earth Day:It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”

Professor Peter Gunter – North Texas State:Demographers agree almost unanimously that widespread famines will begin by 1975 and by the year 2000 the entire world, except North America, Western Europe and Australia, will be in famine.

Life Magazine:Scientists have evidence to support that within a decade urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution. By 1985 air pollution will have reduced sunlight reaching Earth by one-half.

Kenneth Watt – Ecologist:The world will be about 11 degrees colder in the year 2000,  about twice what is takes to put us in an ice age. . . . By 2000 we will use oil at such a rate there won’t be any more.”

U.S. Geological Survey: They reported there was only a ten-year supply of natural gas remaining. Now, 50 years later, they estimate the supply will last over 100 years.

Harrison Brown – National Academy of Sciences: Writing in Scientific American, Brown stated humanity would run out of copper, lead, zinc, tin and gold by 1990.

Dr. Dillon Ripley – Smithsonian Institute:In 25 years somewhere between 75% and 80% of all living animals will be extinct.”

        I could fill many pages with predictions like those supra. Nor did I cherry-pick the most absurd predictions; all of the ones above are from leading scientists. There was not even one upbeat prediction I could find that was made on the original Earth Day or on any Earth Day since. One would think so-called environmentalists would be chastened by their dismal record. But predictions they are making today are every bit as ludicrous as the ones in 1970; instead of being chastened, they are emboldened.

         So, brace yourselves for the palaver you will be force fed during the weeks ahead by the media mob and environmental wackos regurgitating their dog-eared shibboleths. But before you (and especially your children) get too worked up over the doomsday predictions you undoubtedly will be bombarded with, consider the predictions made in 1970. The ones they are making today are likely to be just as true.


In our next post on April 12th, we take on the environmental religion.  
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