Earth Day - The Big FAIL!

Earth Day, 2014, was Tuesday, 22 April (Vladimir Lenin’s birthday). Did you hug the earth on Tuesday?

I was in attendance at the first local Earth Day festivities held in Rittenhouse Square on a sunny afternoon in April, 1970. I don’t know whether to brag about that or hang my head in shame.

Let me regale you with some of the predictions that have been made over the last 44-years by the founders and leaders of the Earth Day movement.

Ø  “Air Pollution (will) take thousands of lives in the next few years alone” (Paul R. Ehrlich – Stanford University Biologist and author of “The Population Bomb,” a book that warned of mass starvation in the 70s and 80s due to overpopulation).

Ø  “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years…The world will be about four degrees colder in 1990 and eleven degrees colder by 2000 – twice what it would take to put us into an ice age” (Kenneth Watt – Ecologist).

Ø  “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years between 75 and 80 percent of all animal species will be extinct” (Sen. Gaylord Nelson – hijacker of the original Earth Day and founder of current Earth Day activities).

Ø  “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years…” (George Wald – Harvard Biologist).

Ø  “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation” (Denis Hayes – chief organizer for Earth Day).

Ø  It was stated that the following timetable was indisputable: “By 1975 widespread famines will begin in India…and will include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, and Africa by 1990. By 2000, or before, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions...along with the entire world with the exception of Europe, North America, and Australia” (Peter Gunter – professor at North Texas State University).

Ø  “Solid evidence exists that urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution and by 1985 the amount of sunlight reaching the earth will have been reduced by one half” (Life Magazine – January, 1970).

Ø  “Due to 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).

Ø  “By the year 2000 there won’t be any more crude oil” (Kenneth Watt – Ecologist).

On the other hand…the growing season across the Northern Hemisphere is expanding, higher CO2 levels are leading to more productive plants and producing an increasing global output of food products, and life expectancy is now the longest in history.

I might point out that contrary to much of the hand-wringing we see coming from Al Gore and all the high-sounding platitudes about Mother Earth coming from the Earth Day crowd, while God expects us to be good stewards of what we have been given, the fact is that we were not put here to save the earth, the earth was put here to save and provide for us. Let’s get real, man was not made for the earth, the earth was made for man.

Let me end with some breaking news…”Study: Fuels From Corn Waste Not Better Than Gas.” What we are coming to find out now, how many years and wasted billions of dollars down the road, is that “Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term.”

I’m not sure how you remember it but my best recollection of the first automobile-Freon changeover in the 80s was from a known working product (R-12) to a highly-questionable better version and less efficient product (R-134) that did not accomplish a whole lot more than to enrich the manufacturer, DuPont Corporation.

The U.N., in a new IPCC Climate Report is essentially informing us that the fix for so-called ‘man-made’ global warming requires that we give up meat, coal, oil, economic growth and national sovereignty.  Sounds like a plan, huh?

How many times do we have to do this dance before sanity prevails?

The bottom line: Earth Day – FAIL!