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Page added on April 23, 2016
Earth Day predictions from 1970 never came true
Environmentalists truly believed and predicted during the first Earth Day in 1970 that the planet was doomed unless drastic actions were taken.
Humanity never quite got around to that drastic action, but environmentalists still recall the first Earth Day fondly and hold many of the predictions in high regard.
So this Earth Day, The Daily Caller News Foundation takes a look at predictions made by environmentalists around the original Earth Day in 1970 to see how they’ve held up.
Have any of these dire predictions come true? No, but that hasn’t stopped environmentalists from worrying.
From predicting the end of civilization to classic worries about peak oil, here are seven environmentalist predictions that were just flat out wrong.
1: “Civilization Will End Within 15 Or 30 Years”
Harvard biologist Dr. George Wald warned shortly before the first Earth Day in 1970 that civilization would soon end “unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Three years before his projection, Wald was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Wald was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race. He even flew to Moscow at one point to advise the leader of the Soviet Union on environmental policy.
Despite his assistance to a communist government, civilization still exists. The percentage of Americans who are concerned about environmental threats has fallen as civilization failed to end by environmental catastrophe.
2: “100-200 Million People Per Year Will Be Starving To Death During The Next Ten Years”
Stanford professor Dr. Paul Ehrlich declared in April 1970 that mass starvation was imminent. His dire predictions failed to materialize as the number of people living in poverty has significantly declined and the amount of food per person has steadily increased, despite population growth. The world’s Gross Domestic Product per person has immeasurably grown despite increases in population.
Ehrlich is largely responsible for this view, having co-published “The Population Bomb” with The Sierra Club in 1968. The book made a number of claims including that millions of humans would starve to death in the 1970s and 1980s, mass famines would sweep England leading to the country’s demise, and that ecological destruction would devastate the planet causing the collapse of civilization.
3: “Population Will Inevitably And Completely Outstrip Whatever Small Increases In Food Supplies We Make”
Paul Ehrlich also made the above claim in 1970, shortly before an agricultural revolution that caused the world’s food supply to rapidly increase.
Ehrlich has consistently failed to revise his predictions when confronted with the fact that they did not occur, stating in 2009 that “perhaps the most serious flaw in The Bomb was that it was much too optimistic about the future.”
4: “Demographers Agree Almost Unanimously … Thirty Years From Now, The Entire World … Will Be In Famine”
Environmentalists in 1970 truly believed in a scientific consensus predicting global famine due to population growth in the developing world, especially in India.
“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,” Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, said in a 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.”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.”
India, where the famines were supposed to begin, recently became one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products and food supply per person in the country has drastically increased in recent years. In fact, the number of people in every country listed by Gunter has risen dramatically since 1970.
5: “In A Decade, Urban Dwellers Will Have To Wear Gas Masks To Survive Air Pollution”
Life magazine stated in January 1970 that scientist had “solid experimental and theoretical evidence” to believe that “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.”
Despite the prediction, air quality has been improving worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Air pollution has also sharply declined in industrialized countries. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas environmentalists are worried about today, is odorless, invisible and harmless to humans in normal amounts.
6: “Childbearing [Will Be] A Punishable Crime Against Society, Unless The Parents Hold A Government License”
David Brower, the first executive director of The Sierra Club made the above claim and went on to say that “[a]ll potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.” Brower was also essential in founding Friends of the Earth and the League Of Conservation Voters and much of the modern environmental movement.
Brower believed that most environmental problems were ultimately attributable to new technology that allowed humans to pass natural limits on population size. He famously stated before his death in 2000 that “all technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent” and repeatedly advocated for mandatory birth control.
Today, the only major government to ever get close to his vision has been China, which ended its one-child policy last October.
7: “By The Year 2000 … There Won’t Be Any More Crude Oil”
On Earth Day in 1970 ecologist Kenneth Watt famously predicted that the world would run out of oil saying, “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.’”
Furthermore, the U.S. now controls the world’s largest untapped oil reserve, the Green River Formation in Colorado. This formation alone contains up to 3 trillion barrels of untapped oil shale, half of which may be recoverable. That’s five and a half times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. This single geologic formation could contain more oil than the rest of the world’s proven reserves combined.
21 Comments on "Earth Day predictions from 1970 never came true"
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 7:19 am
More oily propaganda and oily dreams of a future that will never happen. Who gives a damn how much is where if it cannot be recovered profitably? And most of it cannot so it will remain where it is for eternity, or until the sun goes nova in a few billion years.
joe on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 7:33 am
Its worth looking at those predictions, and why they failed. Or appear to have failed.
I believe governments did act, they spread the use of condoms, and the pill and a rainbow of birth control, so much so that the uncontrolled peoples are needed to spread into the areas controlled. In China you DID need a licence and that policy has worked. If it wasnt for the fact that governments acted to support investment, we would have no oil, easy oil has peaked, fact.
Food supply has gone up, but population growth rates havent gone up as fast, so we can all eat, for now.
Its easy to dismiss Earth Day as a silly idea, but we need that enthusiasm back, and more, to get the changes we need to last the next 30 years, and beyond. 3ft sea level rise is baked in. Where the tide tops out, is up to us.
joe on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 7:35 am
Oh yeah, forgot to say. People in China wear masks in their cities, because of pollution. Fact.
makati1 on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 7:44 am
joe, some people in Manila wear masks also but it does nothing but make them conspicuous. Most are obviously Japanese or Chinese, not Filipinos, Europeans or Americans.
You cannot filter out the gasses that are dangerous, with fiber masks. It might filter out the larger exhaust particles from the jeepney diesel exhaust, but little else. But ignorance probably sells a lot of masks. They would need a serious war time gas mask to be even partially effective against the real killers that you cannot see. There is no “clean” air left in the world. None.
joe on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 8:01 am
Totally agree, the ‘modern’ man suffers from birth in an Asthma pandemic. Every other kid is sucking an inhaler, its almost normal! Alergies are off the chart. Ok, a hundred miles away from city you might get a clear breath, but carbon burned when steam train first rolled on rails still floats in the air, you are right, there is no clean air.
regardingpo on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 8:19 am
Can someone please debunk the bs about the Green River Formation? I can tell it’s bs without even checking it out. Remember Monterey Shale?
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oil-20140521-story.html
onlooker on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 8:20 am
“Earth Day predictions from 1970 never came true” Falsities that may fool some people but not all. All is on track to come true, has come true and will come true worse than any predictions ever made.
Kenz300 on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 8:30 am
Big money wants to keep business as usual……….
Oil Giants Spend $115 Million A Year To Oppose Climate Policy
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/oil-companies-climate-policy_us_570bb841e4b0142232496d97
penury on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 10:01 am
Earth Day predictions are coming true. Like Malthus not wrong, just early. People should not be in a hurry at the rate humans are destroying the planet the final act is drawing close.
Go Speed Racer on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 10:36 am
The big problem with Earth day, is after the day of shouting and screaming into megaphones, it’s cleaning up all the bottles, cans, wrappers and pizza boxes and bringing in enough garbage trucks to dump it somewhere.
Hawkcreek on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 11:45 am
Reminds me of science fiction, in that a lot of the things predicted in novels eventually came true, but much further down the timeline than originally called out.
It is easy to identify trends, but very difficult to predict the dates when they will happen.
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 5:23 pm
They could not have been more wrong about the plant being doomed. Planet is fine.
Now the talking apes on the other hand…..they going bye bye real soon.
Extinction is the rule on this planet and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. The only thing different about this one is that we triggered it and it’s faster than any of the other ones by a long shot. So in that regard, apes are one of a kind.
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 5:39 pm
Brutal heat wave in India puts 330 million people at risk
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/22/brutal-heat-wave-in-india-puts-330-million-people-at-risk/
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 5:41 pm
How toxic algae are threatening humans and wildlife across the world
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-toxic-algae-are-threatening-humans-and-wildlife-across-the-world-2016-04-22
onlooker on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 6:38 pm
https://kennorphan.com/2016/04/22/earth-day-and-the-phantoms-of-a-pathological-culture/
Earth Day and the Phantoms of a Pathological Culture
love this line from linked article
“We must take a long, hard and urgent look into the underpinnings of our entire way of life and the pathology that is industrialized civilization itself. We must look into our soul.”
Apneaman on Sat, 23rd Apr 2016 7:46 pm
How the Apocalypse Will Bring Out the Best in People
After cataclysmic natural disasters, authorities tend to anticipate looting, violence, and a breakdown of social bonds. What they more often find, though, is a rugged spirit of solidarity.
“Civilians conditioned to think that a shotgun is a must-have accessory for the end of the world — or at least for regional calamities — might be surprised to learn that, during most crises, neighbors become far more eager to share than to pillage. (So long as vigilantes don’t go on preemptive self defense.) Despite what you may have heard, looting and violence are inherently uncommon in disaster scenarios.”
“This seemingly paradoxical fact, that people tend to be unusually cooperative and levelheaded in the most dangerous situations of their lives, has been true over and over again through history, all over the world.”
https://psmag.com/how-the-apocalypse-will-bring-out-the-best-in-people-56f51136e770#.qwbue0k25
Like these good folks just doing it on their own in an unofficial capacity.
Local Residents Spend Hours Wading In Houston’s Historic Flooding to Rescue Trapped Horses
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/04/18/local-residents-spend-hours-wading-in-houstons-historic-flooding-to-rescue-trapped-horses/
DAY 3 AND MORE RESCUES AND FLOODING PLAY OUT IN CYPRESS CREEK
http://abc13.com/news/day-3-in-cypress-creek-adds-more-rescues-and-flooding-/1299452/
Westfield and other volunteers used canoes and rafts to get to the residents Tuesday. Today, they’ll bring in a pontoon boat to go from house to house. The swift moving water from the flooded Cypress Creek has made their mission difficult.
“One lady was clinging to a mailbox that one of our guys in the powerboat was able to get her out safe. We’ve had several elderly people we were able to pull out with their medical supplies,” Westfall said.
http://abc13.com/news/day-3-in-cypress-creek-adds-more-rescues-and-flooding-/1299452/
Kenz300 on Sun, 24th Apr 2016 6:34 am
Too many people……….create too much pollution and demand too many resources….
China made great progress in moving its people out of poverty…….one reason was slowing population growth…..
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
CLIMATE CHANGE, declining fish stocks, droughts, floods, air water and land pollution, poverty, water and food shortages all stem from the worlds worst environmental problem……. OVER POPULATION.
Yet the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house and provide energy and water for every year… this is unsustainable… and is a big part of the Climate Change problem
Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm
Apneaman on Sun, 24th Apr 2016 10:54 am
‘It is climate change’: Brutal heatwave in India puts 330 million people at risk
Many of the dead have included labourers and poor farmers who have no choice but to work outside in blistering conditions.
““Let us not fool ourselves that there is no connection between the unusual number of deaths from the ongoing heatwave and the certainty of another failed monsoon,” said the Indian minister for science, technology and earth sciences, Harsh Vardhan, last June. “It’s not just an unusually hot summer, it is climate change.””
http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/1937848/it-climate-change-brutal-heatwave-india-puts-330-million-people
kanon on Sun, 24th Apr 2016 12:01 pm
To be fair and balanced, we need a list of predictions of the “leisure society” or of technological wonders that have never come true. Or for that matter, predictions by the FED that have not come true. The device here is obvious, but it is effective.
Dredd on Sun, 24th Apr 2016 12:26 pm
They have always been right and still are.
Oil-Qaeda does time in seconds, the universe does time in eons.
tick, tick, tick … bored already …
Ride my seasaw (On The Origin of the Sea-level Seesaw – 3).
Davy on Mon, 25th Apr 2016 6:26 am
cool bike: http://inhabitat.com/ikea-is-launching-a-chainless-unisex-bicycle-called-sladda/