Having just gotten back from the Middle East and dealing with the cancelled flights due to the volcano I must have slept through earth day. While we all wring our hands worrying about the earths problems on Earth Day lets not forget the amazing success story of the first Earth Days. If you forgot, or weren't there, the first earth day was in 1970. We were dealing with a severe environmental problem in the 70's. We were told that there was a "consensus among scientists" that we were in a period of "global cooling" caused by us. We could read about it in an article in Newsweek of April 28, 1975 and in other magazines and papers such as Time, National Geographic, and the New York Times. We were told we wouldn't be able to grow food due to the cold and our ports would freeze up in winter so we would not be able to move goods we needed. In fact we were told that by the year 2000 the temperature would be 14 degrees cooler. Made me glad I had moved from Wisconsin to Arizona.
Well some made a lot of money off the scare,but we made it-An amazing success story and a victory for Earth Day. Now we have a comedian by the name of Little Al* changing the scare to to "global warming" and he has found a "consensus among scientists" that we are getting warmer. Hey, it makes a lot of sense, we had a "little ice age" around 1400-1860 and it is warmer now. Please don't tell anyone about the "medieval warming period" of around 1000-1350 because this time like global cooling of the 70's we want this warming to be believed to be caused by us, there's a lot of money can be made on this. Never fear though, like in the 70's, when all the money that can be made has been made we will have solved the problem and will be on to the next scare. Maybe we can recycle some of the old scares such as the "population bomb" of the late 60's that forecast mass starvation by the 70's. The one that scared me was the "running out of oil scare" around 1960. We were told that by the time we could drive there would be no oil, it would be all gone.
*Little Al just bought a $9 million home on the beach in California, his fourth luxury home. This is on the coast where he predicts the ocean to rise 10-20 feet due to the coming global warming.
