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PROPHECIES OF DOOM VS THE REAL WORLD: A FEW EXAMPLES
No Turning Back (Basic Books, 1994)

1865 Coal Supplies to Run Out
"The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation
and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal Mines," by William Stanley Jevons,
1865. (England) "The conclusion is inevitable that our present happy
progressive condition is a thing of limited duration." He predicted
England's coal supplies would be used up quickly by the expanding population
of the prosperous Victorian era.

1886 No More Birds
"We may read [the story] plainly enough in the silent hedges, once vocal
with the morning songs of birds and in the deserted fields where once bright
plumage flashed in the sunlight." Founding statement, Audubon Society.

1887 Humans Will Consume All of Nature
There will soon not be a bird of paradise on earth, and the ostrich has only
been saved by private breeders. Man will not wait for the cooling of the
world to consume everything in it, from teak trees to humming-birds, and a
century or two hence will find himself perplexed by a planet in which there
is nothing except what he makes. He is a poor sort of creator." from "Man
the Destroyer," excerpted from The Spectator (London) and printed The
Audubon Magazine, Issue 1 Vol. 1, February 1887.

1926 Oil To Run Out in 1933
* In 1926 the Federal Oil Conservation Board announced that the United
States would run out of oil in seven years.

1948 War Over Natural Resources, Soils Exhausted
In 1948 two books appeared that seemed to confirm the New York Times'
gloomy prediction. Fairfield Osborn, the president of the New York
Zoological Society published "Our Plundered Planet." William Vogt's "Road
to Survival" became a best seller and a book club favorite when he predicted
that the depletion of soils and minerals would soon lead to smaller supplies
and high prices and possibly another world war, this one over natural
resources.

Population Outgrows Food, Scientists Warn the World,"
front page headline in The New York Times, Sept. 15, 1948. Article said
human race was growing fast while the supply or resources was dwindling.

1962 Spring And No Birds Will Sing
Rachel Carson, a biologist dying of cancer, warns the world that toxic
chemicals are quickly bringing the day when spring will come and no birds
will sing.

1967 Only Brutal Decisions Can Save Us
Paul Ehrlich, THE POPULATION BOMB [NY: Ballantine]
In 1967. Ehrlich predicted imminent doom and that the world would be
saved only by a heartless government stepping on people to make "many
brutal and heartless decisions." could solve the world's problems. "The
batle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo
famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in
spite of any crash programs embarked on now. At this late date nothing can
prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate."

1968 Nobel Laureate: End of World Might be 1985
George Wald: In 1968 this Harvard biologist wond a nobel prize for his
work in physiology and medicine Nobel Prize. He predicted in 1975 that the
world would end in 25 years (The Progressive, December, p. 22), and later
decided the end might come as early as 1985.

1969 50 Years Left for Life on Earth
Barry Commoner [1917-], biologist who ran for president saying only a
socialist system could control technology and the greed that exploited it.
In 1969 he predicted earth's life support systems would be exhausted in 50
years.

1972 Major Resources Gone by 1990s
The Limits to Growth declared four forces, like the Horsemen of the
Apocalypse, would limit the world's joy ride--famine, the exhaustion of
mineral resources, overcrowding, pollution. The world's growing population
would soon be fighting for food, making itself sicker on industrial
pollution, and paying higher and higher prices for natural resources.So far
the world described by the "Club's" prophecy seems to exist in some universe
of opposites.

The authors told readers that by 1981 the world's gold would have
been mined. By 1985 its mercury would be gone. By 1990 no zinc. By 1992 no
petroleum. By 1993 there would be no more copper for electric wiring or
pennies and no natural gas for home heating.

1978 "No Room in the Lifeboats"
New York Times Magazine, April 16, 1978. Article warned that "the cost of
natural resources is going up" and we are entering an "Age of Scarcity."
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The editor of Britain's prestigious journal Nature summed up the main
assumption of the doom promoters: "Their most common error is to suppose
that the worst will always happen." (Maddox, 1972). Of course, if the
worst always happened, civilization would not have spread or survived. This
kind of gloom is at the opposite pole from the conservation movement's faith
in humanity.