Predictions of doom keep failing, so isn’t it rational to doubt them?

By David McElroy · April 22, 2019

For most of my life, I’ve been hearing very specific predictions that the Earth was doomed and humanity was all going to starve to death.

The prescriptions were always the same. Reduce energy use. Don’t have children. Recycle. Stop economic growth. Quit driving cars. The list went on and on.

The predictions we heard — from mainstream scientists respected by the environmental movement — were dire. Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich told us (in his best-selling book, “The Population Bomb”) that millions and millions of people were doomed to starve to death no matter what we did. Respected ecologist Kenneth Watt told us that the world was cooling and that we were heading toward another ice age.

The point isn’t to laugh at the ignorance of well-meaning people in 1970, but to ask why we’re still following the prognostications and political agendas of people whose predictions have all been wrong before.

Today is “Earth Day,” which is a political event created in 1970 to push a political agenda, but it’s promoted today as though all reasonable people should pay attention to it. I don’t have any use for Earth Day or for the hysterical political movement it spawned.

Is there any better way of judging the predictions of a group or an ideology than to look at its prior predictions? I don’t think so.

Even if you’re inclined to give credibility to the agenda of “climate change” and the alleged catastrophic change coming with it, you might find your faith shaken by looking at just how badly wrong this same crowd has been over and over again.

I don’t question the good intentions of the people making these predictions. I don’t make the ridiculous claim that they’re intentionally perpetrating a fraud on us. But I do question their ability to accurately predict the future — based on their horrid track record from the past.

So here is a collection of documented predictions from Earth Day in 1970. Ask yourself how accurate these predictions have been — and then ask yourself why you shouldn’t have rational doubts about the same crowd promoting the same “solutions” all these years later.

Here’s a selection of failed predictions from Earth Day 1970:

“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

“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

“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. 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

If these predictions were so horribly wrong, why exactly are we supposed to accept the latest predictions and hand over political control of our lives to people who claim to know the future today?

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