Cliff Stearns: “It is estimated that 500 million people around the world participated in Earth Day on April 22 this year. We should…”

“It is estimated that 500 million people around the world participated in Earth Day on April 22 this year. We should consider how the environment has changed since the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. Although a celebration, Earth Day 1970 generated a large amount of dire predictions for the future. I think we should take a moment to look back at those. One Harvard biologist declared ``we are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this Nation and of the world as a suitable place for human habitation.'' Another common premonition of devastation centered on population growth. Environmental doomsayers in 1970 estimated that the world population would exceed 7 billion people by the year 2000, prompting one Stanford biologist to state, ``At least 100 to 200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.'' This picture of widespread starvation has not materialized, nor has the population projections. Instead of more than 7 billion people on the earth today, we have roughly just 6 billion. Just as in 2000, environmentalists in 1970 saw a growing environmental catastrophe in the form of climate change. Unlike today, 30 years ago the alarm was sounded over global cooling. They talked about another ice age was in the works. One ecologist, Kenneth Watt, proclaimed that, ``The world will be about 4 degrees colder . . . in 1990, but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000.''”