“Fifth ice age is on the way…..Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.”
—Los Angles Times October 23, 1912
“Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that ‘another world ice-epoch is due.’ He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be ‘wiped out’.”
—Chicago Tribune August 9, 1923
“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
—Paul Ehrlich The Population Bomb 1968
“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half…”
—Life magazine, January 1970.
“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.”
—Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
—Harvard biologist George Wald, Earth Day 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.”
—Barry Commoner Washington University Earth Day 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.
“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.
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, 1971
“This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.”
—Lowell Ponte “The Cooling”, 1976
“A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said… Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years.”
—San Jose Mercury News - June 11, 1986
“(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots… “(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers…The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
—Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund - “Dead Heat” 1990
“By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle…Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North’s greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live…..At present rates of exploitation there may be no rain forest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years.”
—5000 Days to Save the Planet - Edward Goldsmith 1991
‘‘I think we’re in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left - we are now given not 10 years to save the rain forests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.’‘
—ABC - The Miracle Planet April 22, 1990
“The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”
—Carl Sagan - Buffalo News Oct. 15, 1990
