Ecology Club

"During the 1970 Earth Day, given assumptions of continued exponential annual population growth of 2% or more and unchanged or increasing climate impact per person, the following predictions were made:

-Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for the first Earth Day, wrote, "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation."

-Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, stated, "Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct."

-Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University, stated, "... 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."

-Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, predicted that between 1980 and 1989, 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would starve to death.

-Life Magazine wrote, "... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half."

-Ecologist Kenneth Watt stated, "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."

-Watt also stated, "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."