“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist
I'd say civilization is heading near an end. Unless you call what's happening in our inner cities "civilized"
“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
Not too far off really. We have serious water pollution issues all over the US. Water tables have dropped and the pollution indexes are increasing because the pollutants have less water to dilute them. Here in California there are numerous old mine sites oozing mercury and other poisons into the water supply. TCE plumes are all over the state from the aerospace and industrial complex. Pesticide and herbicides are running heavily into the water as are buildups of selenium etc. It's not going away, but water quality indexes just get chaged to allow for your acceptance of it.
“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
Can't say this isn't right either. the oceans are getting more polluted with oil and garbage. Fish populations are declining due to that and overuse.
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“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
The US has largely been sheltered from these last two, but widespread famines have cropped up in many other countries. People are starving; there's little argument over that. We blame the third world mentality for it, and that's true to some degree, but we also tend to feed off of some aspect of their resources, depriving them a tad, and covering up our own weakness for having to have outsourced our food supply
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