[h=1]13 Worst Predictions Made on Earth Day, 1970[/h]
BY JON GABRIEL
04/22/2013
BY JON GABRIEL
04/22/2013
The 1970s were a lousy decade. Embarrassing movies, dreadful music and downright terrifying clothesreflected the national mood following an unpopular war, endless political scandals and a faltering economy.
Popular culture was consumed with decline, especially Hollywood. The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Damnation Alley and countless other dystopian films showed a planet wrecked by war, pollution and neglect. In large part, the entertainment industry was reflecting the culture at large.
In 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated — okay, “celebrated” doesn’t capture the funereal tone of the event. The events (organized in part by then hippie and now convicted murderer Ira Einhorn) predicted death, destruction and disease unless we did exactly as progressives commanded.
Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:
Popular culture was consumed with decline, especially Hollywood. The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Damnation Alley and countless other dystopian films showed a planet wrecked by war, pollution and neglect. In large part, the entertainment industry was reflecting the culture at large.
In 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated — okay, “celebrated” doesn’t capture the funereal tone of the event. The events (organized in part by then hippie and now convicted murderer Ira Einhorn) predicted death, destruction and disease unless we did exactly as progressives commanded.
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
I've never recyled in my life. The planet is my toilet. All of this BS is causing these crazy climate temps. End of April and it was 40 degrees in Indianapolis yesterday. What is the incentive for me to recycle? Too many other important things. People that care about that, Bless them because it means they have nothing else of stress in their lives. I have shit in a hallway before because I couldnt find a toilet. A Mexican janitor wants work? Congrats.
Its simply not that much an additional effort on your part to recycle Vlad and if you do so you'd be contributing to leaving a less messed up planet for people after you. Which I hear you saying "its already so messed up, I don't care." but if people before you hadn't also not given a fuck Vlad things would be better for you now but because they felt like you do, like the world only mattered while they were on it Vlad and that the world was their toilet, YOU will face much higher food prices while you're here Vlad, total unavailable-ness of some foods you've come to like Vlad, maybe losing your home and everything in it due to flood that could have been prevented Vlad and possibly even premature death from a rock tumbling down on ya Vlad due to weather impact that didn't have to be that way.
You don't have kids, do you Vlad?
I suspect people with kids generally care more about leaving a planet behind, to those who have to live here after they die, then people without kids do.
If nothing else Vlad its Bad Karma to live like the world is your toilet. Stop It and you will notice better "luck"....you will lose less wagers by last second idiocy...back-door covers that go against ya Vlad & the like.
I don't really give a shit of people recycle or not. I don't like littering. Recycling meh. Probably ends up at the same place most the time who knows. Although I started recycling some. I just found the comment interesting about people who recycle have less stress. But the world is my toilet? Lol
Vlad says this from a place of Rage. People annoy Vlad and....
rightly so. He doesn't fit in well with the vast majority of people here. What Vlad doesn't consider seriously enough is that many of us don't, its not just him.
When there are millions of morons fighting with each other on all sides of you, like in so many places, and their whole reason for battling is a thing thats obvious Fairy Tale to you its not hard to understand how Vlad could arrive at the conclusion "fuck this place."
But if Vlad would simply consider the possible truth that if our species survives through this, another in a long procession of childish Jihads, Holy Wars... theres a chance we emerge in a place where the herd is sufficiently thinned that the smaller population + the new ways our ancestors (those after us...prolly a different word lol) will be able to communicate has a chance at making a world he'd have felt less alienated from.
If theres any chance at all of that happening...a world without Stone Aged Barbarians & Sheeple warring, if theres any chance at all of this place becoming peaceful I think we should try to leave it as un-messed up as possible to those after us.
Vlad is faced with the question of whether the place is worth putting forth effort to save (or at least not fuck up further). He's arrived at the answer "no".
He may be right. I just wish we could get these Religious Wars over with, like, everyone who feels strongly that their particular man in the sky would have a planet be this way....where Gods make people hate fight and die would just do battle and get it over with so we could move on.
Your Grandkid's kids? You wouldn't even recognize them. The Fanatacism that exists within these idiots today will be as dead and ancient to them as the Latin Language is right now to us.
Mainly cuz complete exhaustion with war over Gods found its way int their DNA....somehow lol.
If Vlad knew their was hope....within that little 6 year old girl he'll see somewhere this week, if Vlad knew that she would be the Mom of someone not surrounded by the type of complete idiots that surround Vlad today...he might not think of the world as his toilet.
Right now he don't see that though.
Oh definitely. Most wouldn't call it that though...a "sense of humour" they'd call it a state of disturbness, a certain discomfort of Mind cuz it was borne from some weird TV show out of England that was on really really late at night when I was super young and had to watch without light showing from under the door and with the volume super low.
I have no prob recognizing you have a great sense of humour though MB. You're brilliant.
Any boundaries that existed, any confusion about whats real and whats myth were shattered by Carlin r.i.p.
Chapter 6: Roghnaíonn fear eolais cosán le croí agus leanann sé, agus ansin Breathnaíonn sé agus lúcháir agus gáire, agus ansin a fheiceann sé agus a fhios.
