Last week, my daughter asked me about earth day. She asked me, with wide eyed curiosity, if I thought we were destroying the earth and that soon we would not have a place to live. She asked me what I thought about global warming. Serious as I am about being a good steward of the earth, and being the husband of a lady who collects bottles to recycle, saves boxes to give away for re-use, and dream of driving a Prius, I pondered how I could tell my daughter what I think of earth day, without sending the wrong message.

By chance, I overheard someone talking about the past predictions of earth day “experts”, so I did some research and discovered revealing insights. These predictions of earth day, from 1970, are instructive and educative. I decided to give them to my daughter, as my partial answer to her query about what I think about earth day. I share them here as well.

Predictions of the Future from Earth Day, 1970

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”

• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“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 biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“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, Stanford University biologist

“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

“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

“The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist