April 22, 2004

Earth Day

Portland tech guru Richard Bennett points to a wonderful Mark Steyn article on Earth Day: bq. THE END OF THE WORLD IS STILL NIGH! In 1968, in his best-selling book The Population Bomb, scientist Paul Ehrlich declared: "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines -- hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." bq. In 1972, in their influential landmark study The Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead, and gas by 1993. bq. In 1977, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States (incredible as it may seem), confidently predicted that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade." bq. Now, in 2002, with enough oil for a century and a half, the planet awash in cut-price minerals, and less global famine, starvation and malnutrition than ever before, the end of the world has had to be rescheduled. Heh... Read the whole thing - it's good! Posted by DaveH at April 22, 2004 10:42 AM