Anybody around here remember any of this 70's enviromental stuff?

These quotes are from before my time so i do not really know how to take them.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“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, the day after the first Earth Day

“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.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“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, Stanford University biologist

“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.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: 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, January 1970

“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.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Stanford's Paul Ehrlich announces that the sky is falling.
“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“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.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “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, Ecologist

 

Yes, Part of our assignment in statistics was to read "The Limits To Growth" by Club of Rome.

There was a lot of conjecture about oil supply and we were also under Federal controls on pricing. 55 mph limit. I drove a VW Beetle.

Price will decide the oil problem imo.


I also believe the earth is not nearly as fragile as some would have you believe. Exponential growth is what Club of Rome feared and there may be some validity to that theory today.

 

I remember one guy was quoted in a national magazine as saying "we are losing 450 species an hour" or something like that... that was the tipping point for me, stop the insanity folks... I never listened to those clowns since... I hate hysteria anyhow, even just a hint of anxiety in a woman's voice completely makes me want to run...

Did you ever meet a person that just lowered anxiety for you when they talked? I love those people, few that they are, I knew one guy, he just could quell anxiety in a conversation, he was a salesman, people were paying him to just talk to them after they got to know him... it took me a long time to figure out what his magic was but basically he did not allow anxiety, he just signaled with his hands that it wasn't allowed.. and his voice was soothing... he made very big bucks just selling stuff to women, very big bucks..

 

The fun part about talking with these bozos is when you give them a solution that works. Wanna stop people from having so many damn kids? Make `em wealthy. And the best way to do that is plenty of liberty, capitalism and property rights. The best way to keep people poor and banging out one kid after another? Socialism, big government, no private property and as little liberty as possible.

Geez they hate that.

The really funny part is Ehrlich is still considered to be an expert on overpopulation despite his wildly inaccurate predictions.

 

That was back when I was in College. I stuck to the 55 speed limit which allowed my trip to from school to go from a 1 six pack deal to an 8 beer trip.

Silver lining in every cloud.

 

while the numbers are off the predictions are coming true...but worse is that caps are melting faster and nobody til the late 80s predicted the warming thats going on now...Millions do starve.There is not one part of ocean where the water does not contain plastic particulates.Coral reefs are dead and dying-80% in parts of florida.Great barrier reef is dying fast.Plankton and reefs are now digesting plastic.Plankton is the food of the ocean.
And 25% of kids in LA have asthma.

Tangible proof yet deniers persist.

 

DSG, please do not get offended, but how old are you? The reason I ask is because I wanted to know if there was tangible proof supporting the claims these guys made back in the 70's.

If you are my age then what if we are in the same situation only with new stats?

and in 40 years you and I will be the people saying, yeah yeah we heard all this back in the day.

 

The melting caps,plastic in the ocean,kids asthma,risng temps are not stats-they are facts.Does that mean the world end?I dont know.Does it mean bad things are happening.Yup.Should we continue to dump crap in the ocean and waste resources and fossil fuels?No.
And why should we continue on this destructive path?

 

I remember a CBS news special hosted by non other than Walter Cronkite. This was in the mid to late '70's. He said we would run out of oil in the '90's.

I also remember a RE ce class I took in 1980 where the instructor said "The 30 year, fixed rate mortgage is history...you will never see it again..." It was a class on "creative financing". Everyone in ther room believed it, too.

Of course, neither happened.

 

I remember a CBS news special hosted by non other than Walter Cronkite. This was in the mid to late '70's. He said we would run out of oil in the '90's.
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I remember this in HS. Handouts of graphs showing world reserves and how we would run out of oil. I really was concerned but as the years went by subsequent graphs kept increasing the amount of oil reserves. Graphs are really great. (sarcasm)

Save a tree use a plastic bag was all the rage.

Nuclear power would make us independent of foreign oil.