Edhat Staff
Photo: John Wiley
By edhat staff
Earth Day is celebrated worldwide on April 22 and has ushered in promising legislation throughout the globe for Mother Earth. Although for Santa Barbarans, Earth Day means much more.
For those who have lived here long enough, 1969 was the year everyone became intimately aware of human’s effect on the environment. On January 28, a well drilled by Union Oil Platform A off the coast blew out. More than three million gallons of oil spewed, killing over 10,000 seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions.
Local activists banned together to create environmental regulation, education, and in effect, Earth Day. That’s right, in case you didn’t know, Earth Day was founded in Santa Barbara. We have Selma Rubin, Marc McGinnes, Bud Bottoms, and many more to thank for this.
On the first anniversary of the oil spill, January 28, 1970, Environmental Rights Day was celebrated locally. A Declaration of Environmental Rights was written by Rod Nash during a boat trip across the Santa Barbara Channel while carrying a copy of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Many activists and local politicians spoke during the event that drew a giant and passionate crowd ready to enact change.
Environmental Rights Day organizers had been working closely with then-Congressman Pete McCloskey to consult on the creation of the National Environmental Policy Act, the first of many new environmental protection laws sparked by the oil spill. Wisconsin Senator Gaylor Nelson also founded Earth Day during an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. Local activists also went on to develop the first undergraduate Environmental Studies program of its kind at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Today, Santa Barbara holds to its traditions and continues an annual Earth Day Festival. The Community Environmental Council (CEC) pioneers real-life solutions in areas with the most impact on climate change. CEC’s annual Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival prides itself on making it one of the cleanest, greenest and most sustainably-minded events around, improving every year.
The CEC will host its 2019 Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival at Alameda Park Saturday, April 27 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 28 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a bonus free evening concert including Beer & Wine Garden on Friday, April 26 from 5 p.m. – 9 p.m. Click here for more information on the festival.
Can’t get locally produced asphalt to repair our city streets due to environmental opposition. Happy Earth Day.
You can see how all the worn-out falsehoods posted at 11:32 have been refuted at:
==================================================================
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php
==================================================================
SkepticalScience.com as a reference? OMG. Like asking a child if eatibg candy and ice cream for all meals is a healthy diet. How about recommending an accurate source instead of an insulting joke web site?
Is population – too many people – a factor in Earth Day pollution or warming issues? If not, might SB welcome those from the border seeking refuge?
Obviously, you think Facebook is the gold standard.
It is paramount to be stewards of our planet to the best of our abilities.
But unfortunately too many go “off the deep end” with predictions, and laws, that ultimately destroy their credibility about the challenges we face.
Some examples of that were recently highlighted in various sources like here:
“The American Enterprise Institute doled out 18 of their biggest flops since 1970. You can read about the rest on their site.
Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle.“The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “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.”
Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil.You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Yet, we still have crude oil, 65 million Americans didn’t die, let alone 4 billion people, and 15-30 years have passed. We’re still here. Now, I’m hearing we’re actually going to be done for in the next 12 years? Sorry, you guys were wrong then, and you’re probably wrong now. Science isn’t settled. It changes.”
Deniers are loquaciously ignorant.
Many of those things would have happened had we not taken action.
“Now, I’m hearing we’re actually going to be done for in the next 12 years?”
You’re only hearing that from the right wing noise machine that you’re part of. The actual fact is that we only have 12 years (less now) to be able adhere to the Paris Accord pledge to keep below dangerous temperature thresholds:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report
“Science isn’t settled. It changes.”
The science shows that global warming is a serious threat, and what we have learned from more and more science is that threat is more severe than previously known.
The science is settled that the Earth revolves around the sun, not v.v., and as science changes we know more and more detail. The sorts of changes that we see in science do not support geocentrism, a flat Earth, life suddenly appearing on Earth 6000 years ago, or denial of global warming and climate change.