The Comedy of Climate Panic: How Decades of Wrong Environmental Predictions Showed What the Alarmists Really Want

In 1970, environmental alarmism was first introduced to the world. It has since become a common theme in current political debate. The first Earth Day wasn’t just a celebration of nature; it was also a strong call to action, fueled by a lot of doomsday warnings. Scientists, activists, and political leaders warned of mass death, starvation, suffocation from smog, and the end of society itself if drastic steps were not taken right away.

But as the years have gone by, these predictions have not only been wrong, they’ve been laughably wrong. In a logical world, the fact that humanity has thrived instead of died out should make us think deeply. However, instead of taking responsibility, many environmental activists stepped up their efforts, changing their language from “global cooling” to “global warming” and now to the vague word “climate change,” making sure that the story can never be proven false.

Stu Burguiere of BlazeTV recently talked about an article from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) that lists 18 wildly wrong statements that were made around the first Earth Day. His insightful and funny analysis is a welcome reminder that the “experts” we are told to believe have a pretty bad track record. It’s important to look at this past, not just for the laughs, but also to understand what it means for public policy, the reliability of the media, and the ideological battle over scientific authority.

The fall of civilization: the disaster that never happened

A Harvard scientist named George Wald made one of the scariest predictions: he said that society would end in 15 to 30 years if big changes weren’t made. At the time, Wald’s qualifications made his voice heard, and many people didn’t question his warnings.

After more than fifty years, society has not only survived, it has grown. World GDP has gone through the roof. Every part of life has changed because of new technologies, from healthcare to information to transportation. Around the world, people are living much longer than they used to. Environmentalists have a lot of problems with free-market systems, but they have brought about a level of wealth that was unimaginable in 1970.

This incredibly wrong prediction shows how environmental panic often ignores human creativity, free business, and technological progress—three things that conservatives and Republicans still support as the best ways to solve the world’s problems.

Lack of food and the Green Revolution

In the history of environmental alarmism, Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, stands out as the most important person. Ehrlich was sure that hundreds of millions of people would die each year by the 1980s because there wouldn’t be enough food. He even suggested extreme steps, like making sterilizing a must, to stop the disaster.

The Green Revolution is what really happened. Agricultural innovation, led by scientists like Norman Borlaug, greatly improved crop yields, which made it possible for food production to grow faster than population growth. Instead of drought, there was a big drop in world hunger in the 1980s.

Once more, the real world favored human creativity and free market answers over government interference that would lead to the end of the world. Conservatives have long said that the best way to solve world problems is to give people and businesses more power instead of controlling everything from the top down. The Green Revolution proved this theory beyond a doubt.

The Four Billion Deaths That Didn’t Happen

Ehrlich said that four billion people, including 65 million Americans, would “die off” between 1980 and 1989, based on his story about people going hungry. This scary picture said that the U.S. would be a place where people were starving and dying.

Instead, America had a great economic growth, the invention of the desktop computer, and life quality gains that had never been seen before. Population growth continued around the world, but so did access to food, health care, and schooling. Billions of people did not die; instead, they lived better lives.

Once again, the strength of people, along with free-market economics and individual creativity, made a joke of the centralized, forceful answers that environmental alarmists wanted.

The War on Air and Smog Masks

In 1970, activists said that by 1985, people living in cities would need gas masks just to stay alive because smog would cover the cities and cut the sunlight in half. Many people thought that a lot of people would die in New York and Los Angeles.

But things were not what they seemed. Even though air pollution was a real problem, especially in cities with lots of factories, the worst-case situations never came true. Small steps forward in lowering air pollution through new technologies, stricter rules, and changing business practices prevented the end of the world that was thought to happen.

Consistently, conservatives have pushed for reasonable care of the environment, recognizing real issues while rejecting panic and overreach. This balance, not fear, has been shown over and over to be the right way to act.

The Myth of Resource Depletion

A harmful lie that stuck around for a long time said that people would run out of important resources by the 1990s or early 2000s. It was planned for copper, lead, tin, gold, and silver to all disappear, which would have thrown the world into chaos.

Even so, these tools are still easy to find now, decades later. New ways of mining, recycling, and exploration have made more reserves accessible. Innovations driven by the market, not government orders, have kept resources available.

That this statement was wrong is a direct response to the socialist view that human consumption is inherently harmful. Conservatives know that people are not just consumers; they are also creators who can come up with new ways to meet wants and solve problems if they are free to do so.

There were fish, rivers, and another end of the world that never happened

In 1970, the idea that pollution would kill all freshwater fish sounded very scary. The rivers and lakes in the United States would be natural dead zones today if this were true.

Instead, many aquatic environments have gotten better. Conservation efforts, along with better waste management and technological progress, have helped restore many bodies of water without the disastrous collapses that environmentalists worried about.

Once more, the answer was sensible, practical action instead of harsh economic rules.

From the Coming Ice Age to Climate Change: A Story Looking for a Crisis

The change from worrying about a new ice age to worrying about global warming may have been the most silly change in environmental alarmism. On the first Earth Day, scientists worried that the Earth was cooling down very quickly. But within a few decades, the story turned around completely.

Many of the same organizations and people just moved the goalposts instead of admitting they were wrong in the past. The problem wasn’t cooling; it was warming, and any change in the way the weather usually works could be used as proof.

This change in tone shows how flexible environmental stories can be. It’s not about science; it’s about keeping things in a constant state of crisis so that the government can keep growing its power. Rightly, conservatives and Republicans have fought back against this manipulation of the story, calling for real scientific research instead of fear-mongering for political reasons.

Life Expectancy: The Most Convincing Argument

Alarmists also said that pollution and running out of resources would cause life span to drop to just 42 years by 1980.

Instead, life expectancy rose a lot in both rich and developing countries. A better future came about because of business and new ideas, which led to medical progress, better nutrition, and higher living standards.

Environmental alarmists have never given a good reason for their bleak predictions to be so far off. Still, they keep calling for big changes based on their latest doomsday scenarios, thinking that people will forget how badly they failed in the past.

Why climate panic is important for the left

In its core, the fear about the earth is about power. The left’s philosophy rests on getting people to believe that they have to give up their freedom in order to stay alive. When a problem is so bad that billions of people will die and society will end, it makes sense for the government to get involved in a big way.

Climate change is the perfect issue for this plan because it is vague, everywhere, and can be changed at any time. Any change in the weather can be seen as proof of climate change. Any change from what has happened in the past is proof of disaster.

This is why there is almost no accountability for statements that don’t come true. Correct predictions were never the goal; control was.

The Conservative Way to Take Care of the Environment

Conservatives have long pushed for caring for the environment in a responsible way, not as an excuse for socialism but as part of a larger mindset that values creation, property rights, and human worth.

Real success in protecting the environment comes from new ideas, better technology, and people working together on their own, not from rules set by the government, tight budgets, and fear.

In the past, it has been shown that free societies last longer, are healthier, and are cleaner than totalitarian ones. The terrible environmental tragedies in the Soviet Union show what happens when environmental policy is set by central planners instead of market forces.

The media’s role in the panic machine

Environmental alarmism has been kept alive in large part by the mass media. News stories with shocking headlines get people’s attention, sell ads, and put pressure on politicians. Journalists almost never go back and look at old statements to see how accurate they were.

Instead, the media spreads every new fear story like a loudspeaker, taking every scary prediction as fact. “Deniers” are used to describe people who don’t believe the story, which is meant to make doubt seem morally wrong.

Conservatives have been leading the charge against this media-stoked panic by supporting doubt, smart discussion, and real scientific argument.

It’s Not Safe to Cry Wolf

When activists keep calling for disasters that don’t happen, they lose the public’s trust. This isn’t just a theoretical worry; it has effects in the real world.

People stop caring about real environmental problems. A lot of people are skeptical because of years of exaggerated lies that have made people think that problems aren’t as bad as they seem.

The left’s careless use of fear to push for political change has hurt the cause they say they support. Conservatives know that to build a healthy future, we need to be honest, realistic, and respect people’s freedom, not always be scared.

Taking the next step: choosing innovation over alarmism

Fear is not the way forward; freedom is. People have always found ways to solve problems that seemed impossible at first. The last fifty years have been full of triumphs, not tragedies. We have fed billions of people, cleaned up rivers, and made people live longer.

Conservatives and Republicans need to keep fighting for the values that made this success possible, like limited government, free enterprise, technological innovation, and personal responsibility.

Instead of giving up and giving in to the never-ending stories of disaster, Americans should be positive and sure that our best days are ahead of us, not behind us.

In conclusion, environmental alarmists have left behind a laughable legacy

The 18 hilariously wrong predictions made on the first Earth Day are more than just interesting facts about the past. They say a lot about the alarmist way of thinking that is still common in current conversation.

Conservatives can remind everyone of a basic truth: people are not the world’s worst problem; they are its best chance. Freedom, faith, and new ideas give people the power to meet any problem without fear but with confidence.

The left will keep spreading fear because it’s the only way they can stay in power. But the conservative movement offers a better way—one that is based on truth, hope, and a strong belief in what free people can do.