SOURCE:
"Earth Day (was) a good time to remind the public what the (failed) predictions were 52 years ago – Here are some of the dire predictions from the first Earth Day, compiled by Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute:
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis that threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
Flashback: Prof. Ross McKitrick: ‘I abhor Earth Hour…It celebrates ignorance, poverty & backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism’
Earth ‘serially doomed’: The official history of climate ‘Tipping Points’ began in 1864
Climate Tipping Points date back to at least 1864
– “As early as 1864 George Perkins Marsh, sometimes said to be the father of American ecology, warned that the earth was ‘fast becoming an unfit home for its “noblest inhabitant,”’ and that unless men changed their ways it would be reduced ‘to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.’” —MIT professor Leo Marx
Earth “Serially Doomed” – Perhaps the best summary of the tipping-point phenomenon comes from UK scientist Philip Stott. “In essence, the Earth has been given a 10-year survival warning regularly for the last fifty or so years.
We have been serially doomed,” Stott explained. “Our post-modern period of climate change angst can probably be traced back to the late-1960s, if not earlier. By 1973, and the ‘global cooling’ scare, it was in full swing, with predictions of the imminent collapse of the world within ten to twenty years, exacerbated by the impacts of a nuclear winter.”
Marc Morano:
“We should actually promote prosperity, technology, and wealth. We should do what we’ve been doing since the first Earth Day in 1970, when we had filthy rivers, dirty air, and massive pollution.
We raised awareness and ended up with, in the 50 years since 1970, radical increases in population, radical increases in economic growth, and incredible improvements in just about everything, to the point where even mainstream media and climate activists now admit that the pollution problem has largely been solved.
Where we were and where we are now is a light-and-day difference. I would argue that we do the best environmental policy, that we invest in technology, and that we keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
Bjorn Lomborg:
50 years after the first Earth Day, the planet’s doing pretty well: Lomborg: In America, for instance, a recent comprehensive study showed that “water pollution concentrations have fallen substantially” over the past 50 years. And a stunning 3.8 billion people in the world have gained access to clean drinking water since the 1970s.
Air pollution, the world’s biggest environmental killer, has seen even greater improvements. Outdoor air pollution has declined dramatically in rich countries, in no small measure due to attention from the 1970 Earth Day and the legislation it inspired, such as the landmark US Clean Air Act enacted later that year.
For the world’s poor, the deadliest air pollution is indoors. Almost 3 billion of the world’s poorest still cook and keep warm with dirty fuels like dung, cardboard and wood, and the World Health Organization estimates the effects are equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes daily.
Since 1970, the death risk across the world from indoor air pollution has been cut by more than half.
WHO reports:
US ranked among countries with the cleanest air in the world – Significantly cleaner air than in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, UK, Japan, Austria, & France – President Trump was right – being in the Paris Climate Accord was not in America’s best interests. Especially since the US is listed among countries with the cleanest air in the world, according to the W.H.O… That’s after all the G7 countries whined about Trump removing us from the accords in 2017
In its 2018 report (& 2019 report) on air pollution, the W.H.O. ranked the United States among the countries with the cleanest air in the world, significantly cleaner than the air in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, Japan, Austria, and France.
WHO 2019 report: “Northern America remains one of the regions with the lowest overall PM2.5 levels worldwide.”
Air quality. U.S. air is as clean as it has ever been. From 1980 to 2018, except where noted [Source: U.S. EPA]:
Carbon monoxide, down 83%
Lead, down 99%
Nitrous oxides, down 61%
Ozone, down 31%
Particulate matter (10 micrograms & below), down 26%
Particulate matter (2.5 micrograms & below), down 39% (2000-2018)
Sulfur dioxide, down 91%
Flashback:
Analysis of EPA: Climate change ‘politicized the EPA’ – ‘EPA has (mostly) solved the most basic and widespread public health and environmental problems that plagued the U.S’
– Amy Harder of Axios: ‘The EPA has (mostly) solved the most basic and widespread public health and environmental problems that plagued the U.S. back around the ’60’s. Climate change is now the top environmental issue in the country. That politicizes the EPA, makes it less of a big deal to average Americans and fuels antipathy from elected Republicans, most of whom don’t acknowledge it’s a real issue.’
‘The Obama administration issued a steady stream of major regulations on climate change…It was one of the most aggressive EPA’s ever’
‘Most past Republican presidents nominated EPA administrators who were more to the left on environmental issues than the Republican Party writ large.’"