{"id":5506,"date":"2020-04-22T08:41:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T12:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/?p=5506"},"modified":"2020-04-22T08:41:39","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T12:41:39","slug":"happy-lenins-birthday-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbin.net\/blog\/environment\/happy-lenins-birthday-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Lenin\u2019s Birthday!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yup, it\u2019s<\/a> time for the<\/a> annual <\/a>Lenin\u2019s Birthday<\/a> post<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you coming in late to the party, Earth Day\u201d is on \nLenin\u2019s Birthday.  Not a coincidence, given that the \u201cfounder\u201d of Earth \nDay was much more a \u201cWatermelon\u201d than an actual environmentalist. Watermelon: Thin layer of green of the outside, red to the core.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s review the predictions from the very first so called<\/em> \u201cEarth Day\u201d back in 1970<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCivilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action \nis taken against problems facing mankind.\u201d \u2014 George Wald, Harvard \nBiologist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPopulation will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small \nincreases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until \nat least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death \nduring the next ten years.\u201d \u2014 Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University \nbiologist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy\u2026[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated \nthe present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of \nunbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the \nultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of \nthe 1980s.\u201d \u2014 Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is already too late to avoid mass starvation,\u201d \u2014 Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDemographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim \ntimetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will \nspread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near \nEast, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central\n America will exist under famine conditions\u2026.By the year 2000, thirty \nyears from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, \nNorth America, and Australia, will be in famine.\u201d \u2014 Peter Gunter, \nprofessor, North Texas State University<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cScientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to \nsupport\u2026the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have\n to wear gas masks to survive air pollution\u2026by 1985 air pollution will \nhave reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half\u2026.\u201d \u2014 Life\n Magazine, January 1970<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it\u2019s only a matter of time \nbefore light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land\n will be usable.\u201d \u2014 Kenneth Watt, Ecologist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAir pollution\u2026is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of \nlives in the next few years alone.\u201d \u2014 Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University \nbiologist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ok, Ehrlich was sorta right on \nthis, if you restrict his predictions to modern Communist China, where \nthey are showing the typical communist\/socialist contempt for the \nenvironment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up \ncrude oil at such a rate\u2026that there won\u2019t be any more crude oil. You\u2019ll \ndrive up to the pump and say, `Fill \u2018er up, buddy,\u2019 and he\u2019ll say, `I am\n very sorry, there isn\u2019t any.\u2019\u201d \u2014 Kenneth Watt, Ecologist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now we get to my personal favorite, although probably not Al Gore<\/a>\u2018s\u2026
\u201cThe\n world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,\u201d he declared. \n\u201cIf present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder\n for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in \nthe year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an \nice age.\u201d \u2014 Kenneth Watt, Ecologist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2014 Update<\/strong>: Wired Magazine publishes this article: Renewables Aren\u2019t Enough. Clean Coal Is the Future<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wouldn\u2019t be Lenin\u2019s Birthday with out this clip of the late George Carlin discussing \u201cSaving the Planet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n