March 29, 2024
Ehrlich celebrating
PAUL EHRLICH — WHAT IS HE CELEBRATING?

Do you ever wonder why environmentalists are unhappy when an environmental disaster doesn’t happen? In 1988, Ted Danson predicted that we only had 10 years to live because the oceans were going to be dead and, if the oceans died, then we would all soon follow.

Danson’s deadline passed 17 years ago and the oceans didn’t die—not even close. We’re all still here, too. Have you heard anything about Mr. Danson holding any celebrations? Did he even express relief or say something like, ”The oceans are still alive, and we are too, and, boy, am I glad?”

In Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, ”The Population Bomb,” Ehrlich claimed humanity was overpopulating at such a rate hundreds of millions of us would die of starvation during the 1970s and that by 1985, enough billions would have died that the Earth’s population would have shrunk to 1.5 billion.  By 1999, according to Ehrlich, the over-consuming United States would suffer such devastating environmental catastrophes that the life expectancy of its citizens would have dropped to 42 years, and its population would be a mere 22.6 million.

Instead, in 2015, the population of the world is more than seven billion and growing. The U.S. is home to 320 million people with more stampeding our borders to gain entry. Our GDP is still growing (albeit slowly), our life expectancy continues to rise, and we are plagued by obesity rather than starvation. To underscore how wrong Ehrlich was, many countries now are concerned about underpopulation rather than overpopulation. They are worrying that the ”Ehrlich scare” birth rates are too low to produce the workers needed to keep their economies running (and to support all those seniors).

But do you ever hear Ehrlich or any liberal celebrating because the greatest disaster in the history of mankind, which they keep predicting in one form after another, didn’t happen? Not only did Ehrlich not celebrate, he still contends that he was right. So do most liberals. Now Mr. Population Bomb is predicting that overpopulation is going to get so bad and food so scarce those of us who survive are going to have to become cannibals to do so.

Better stock up on ketchup.

In 2009 and again in 2011, when a whistleblower uncovered emails revealing that the prediction that the globe will warm to the extent that 90 percent of humanity will be wiped out was based on manufactured data, did even a single liberal say ”hallelujah” or even break into a smile?

Not a one.

Instead they became furious.

The New York Times refused to print what may be the best news humanity has ever received.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer tried to prosecute the person or persons responsible. How dare they debunk a perfectly good doomsday?

How could anyone not be happy to learn that 90 percent of the people on Earth aren’t going to die from global warming? What kind of monster must Paul Ehrlich and his devotees be that, when billions of people don’t starve to death, he doesn’t celebrate? How could anyone who cares as much about nature, as Mr. Danson claims he does, not be joyful when the oceans didn’t die as he predicted?

Let me put this in a more personal way. If you and nine members of your family and friends were told that an impending catastrophe was going to kill all but one of you, that this prediction was a sure thing backed by scientists and political leaders all over the world, and that it would happen by a certain date (”There’s no way we’re going to survive beyond…”), and then that purported doomsday came and went and you and all your loved ones didn’t die, what would you do? Wouldn’t you run leaping, shouting, and crying through the streets, hugging one another, kissing passersby and thanking whomever or whatever was responsible for your good fortune? Or would you sulk and become angry and try to think up another way to be convinced that nine out of ten of you were going to die?

Why is it that not a single liberal has celebrated when none of the doomsdays they have predicted—the ozone hole, the ice age, nuclear war, overpopulation, the extinction crisis, worldwide famine, any number of epidemics, running out of oil, coal, trees, whatever, the collapse of capitalism—came to pass?

How could this be possible? The answer, of course, is: It isn’t possible. No one, not even a liberal could be that callous or that stupid.

So, why don’t they celebrate? Because they know how phony their predictions of disaster are. That’s why all the global-warming believers in the Southwest haven’t moved to International Falls, Minn., to escape the heat. It’s why the Global Warming Believers (GWBs) in California still live as close as they can to the ocean even though they themselves predict it will rise catastrophically.

They ignore their own chicken-little predictions because they all know that the liberal practice of predicting doomsday in as many forms as they can dream up is nothing but a scam, a scam to get the rest of us to turn political power over to them — to let them tell us how many babies we can have, how long we can live, what kind of car we can drive, when and where we can drive it, how warm or cool we can set our thermostats, what we can eat and drink, what kind of light bulbs we can use, how much we can water our lawn, what kind of plants we can plant there, what we can teach our children, yes, even how many sheets of toilet paper we can use.

Now, that’s something they can celebrate.

MORE…

For Earth Day 2008, the Washington Policy Center issued a press release quoting the ”outrageously alarmist, and outrageously wrong, predictions that accompanied the first Earth Day in 1970.”

Here are a few:

“¢ ”…civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”—Biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970

“¢ By 1995, ”…somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”—Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970

“¢ Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor ”…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.”—Newsweek magazine, Jan. 26, 1970

“¢ The world will be ”…11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”—Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970

“¢ ”We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”—Biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970

“¢ ”Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction.”—The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970

“¢ ”By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.”—Life magazine, January 1970

“¢ ”Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make.”—Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970

“¢ ”…air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”—Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970

“¢ Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

“¢ ”It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”—Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970

“¢ ”By the year 2000…the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine.”—Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970

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