That day where Environmentalists lament that the rest of us have either have just ignored them (at best) or decided not to let them control our lives (at worst, from their perspective). Why should I let them – I grew up and live in a country where the foundation is personal Freedom and individual Liberty? I did not grow up in a collectivist society – yet that is what they are trying to create. No, not because it is supposed to make ME better (though that is one of their lame excuses: “it will be good for you!”) but they believe that they must do everything they can to protect “Mother Earth” – GAIA worship. Or sure, the next pretense is that wailed about is “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE”!
Note to clueless: we all ARE gonna die but just not generally because of your screaming at us. Know why? I’ve been listening to this crap for 50 years and almost all of the predictions the Green Totalitarians have shoved at us have turned out wrong. But, like the true inner socialists they are, facts don’t seem to matter. Here in the US, our air is MUCH cleaner, the river water doesn’t catch fire, and the land is far better as well. Smog doesn’t sting the eyes the way it used to, the water is safer, and we generally don’t have to worry where the kids play. Here’s some of them that were made back in 1970, courtesy of Big Peace:
- “Air pollution… is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
- “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
- “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
- “We have about five more years at the outside to do something.” Kenneth Watt
- “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” George Wald, Harvard 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
- “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
- “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
- “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
Yes, Government has played a rule here but the environmentalists aren’t happy – they want to push things beyond the 80/20 Principle and basically eliminate anything (including CO2, a necessary gas for human life) that gets into their furry little heads on the order of “it’s bad for us!”. What they often fail to take into consideration that people are rather bright, curious, and inventive – they’ve come up with a lot of ways to fix things not only in the clean up area but also from the prevent area.
Another thing that is also not at the top of their minds – it is generally the richer societies that fix the environmental problems they have created first; poorer nations, not so much. Yet it seems that they are hellbent to do everything they can to kill that wealth off on the stupid idea that we cannot have any kind of a consumeristic economy AND still be better environmentally so they use the force of Government to eliminate or make harder to tread on the paths that would make a society richer. They also don’t care that in making everything much more expensive (remember that 80/20 Rule), standards of living will fall – but that ties into their mantra of “Everyone MUST do with less” as that is the only way to stop pollution.
So, the next time you hear “we have to stop X,Y, & Z or we won’t survive”, link them to this post.
