Is it Earth Day again? Why yes, yes it is. (It’s also Lenin’s birthday. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.) I’ll be having a Green Weenie roast on my charcoal grill. Now, where to start?
How about with Obama jetting off today to the Everglades in Florida (estimated jet fuel burned: 9,000 gallons) to use that famous overgrown swamp as a backdrop to warn us of the peril of climate change. But the real problems of the Everglades were caused by . . . the U.S. government (specifically the Army Corps of Engineers), which decided decades ago to reroute rivers and streams through it to create more ag land (partly for sugar plantations we don’t need). There’s a long running state-federal Everglades Restoration Plan that has spent millions . . . mostly to have lots of long, frustrating meetings with “stakeholders.” Well I’m sure Obama will at least give a recycled speech. Meanwhile, James Taranto sensibly wonders—if global warming is imminent and severe, why is the Miami real estate market so hot?
I think it was on Earth Day in 2009 that Obama promised to have 1 million electric cars on the road by this year. We’re about 800,000 cars short of that goal. Moreover, it is reported today that record numbers of electric car owners are trading them in for . . . gasoline-powered cars:
President Barack Obama promised to put a million more hybrid and electric cars on the road during his tenure, but new research shows drivers are trading them in to buy sports utility vehicles (SUVs).
The auto-research group Edmunds.com found that “22 percent of people who have traded in their hybrids and [electric vehicles] in 2015 bought a new SUV.”
What else? Oh yes, the annual Earth Day observances on the National Mall in Washington DC left the usual piles of trash behind:
Yes, it’s that time of year where liberals celebrate Mother Gaia by trashing every place they touch like a bunch of smug, pot-smoking, latte-drinking, garbage-ridden locusts. This time it was the National Mall where they held a “Global Citizen” concert with the likes of Usher and No Doubt. Apparently being a “global citizen” doesn’t include picking up after yourself.
And my pal Mark Perry offers up the list of the greatest hits of spectacularly wrong environmental predictions from around the time of the first Earth Day. A few of my favorites:
Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “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.”
In January 1970, Life reported, “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….”
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