Examining Failed Predictions from Early Climate Activism

Predictions from the First Earth Day Era

• 💡 A review of predictions made around the first Earth Day in 1970 highlights numerous spectacularly wrong forecasts.
• 🎯 Harvard biologist George Wald estimated civilization would end by 1985 or 2000, a prediction that did not materialize.

Population and Famine Forecasts

• 📉 Paul Ehrlich predicted in 1970 that population would outstrip food supplies, leading to 100-200 million people starving annually by 1980.
• 🌍 Further predictions suggested widespread famines by 1975 and 2000 across large parts of the world, which also did not occur.
• 💥 Ehrlich also warned of a "Great Die Off" between 1980 and 1989, predicting billions would perish, a scenario that did not unfold.

Environmental and Resource Depletion Predictions

• 💨 In 1970, scientists predicted urban dwellers would need gas masks due to air pollution within a decade, and that sunlight reaching Earth would be halved by 1985.
• 🐟 Barry Commoner predicted that oxygen depletion would cause freshwater fish to suffocate, a prediction that has not come to pass.
• 🚗 Ecologist Kenneth Watt predicted in 1970 that crude oil would be depleted by the year 2000 if current trends continued.
• ⛏️ Harrison Brown projected that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000, and other metals like lead and zinc before 1990, which has not happened.

Shifting Climate Concerns

• 🥶 Senator Gaylord Nelson noted a belief that 75-80% of animal species would be extinct within 25 years, a prediction that appears inaccurate.
• 📈 Kenneth Watt also warned of a pending ice age, predicting global temperatures would drop significantly by 1990 and 2000.
• 🔄 The prevailing concern around the first Earth Day was global cooling and an impending ice age, a stark contrast to today's focus on global warming, with a notable lack of acknowledgment for the shift in predictions.