April 22 will mark the 45th anniversary of the first Earth Day event, held in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970.  If you do a computer search for Earth Day you will get the usual mindless liberal pablum about how millions of people all over the world celebrate this “holiday.”  Here are what Al Gore might call the inconvenient truths about Earth Day.

The first Earth Day was largely the creation of two men; Ira Einhorn and Paul Erlich.  They were “environmentalists,” which then, as now, meant people who blame mankind in general for despoiling the planet, and capitalism in particular for permitting evil humans to do such a thing.  Like all good Marxists, they believed that all would be well as soon as the government dictated what industry could produce, where people could work, what they could eat, and how much the rich nations should give to the poor ones.  Sound familiar?

Let’s get to the personalities.  Ira Einhorn was an associate of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.  A true humanitarian, in 1977 he bludgeoned his girlfriend, Holly Maddux, to death, stuffed her body in a trunk in his apartment, and forgot about her, until her remains were found 2 years later.  Einhorn hired lawyer Arlen Specter.  Specter got Einhorn a $40,000 bail, Einhorn posted 10%, and skipped off to Sweden.  He was discovered living in France in 1997, returned, and is now serving life in prison.

Well, anybody can make a mistake.  How about Paul Erlich?  Erlich was a Professor at Stanford University.  In 1968, he wrote a book, The Population Bomb, which predicted that by the 1980’s world population would outstrip the ability of our economic system to produce more food (damn capitalists) and up to 200 million people would starve to death.  He might have been wrong there.  The world’s population has doubled since 1968 without the predicted mass starvation.  Well, anybody can make a mistake.

The other speakers at the first Earth Day made a few mistakes too.  Harvard biologist George Wald predicted that civilization would end within 30 years.  North Texas State University Professor Peter Gunter predicted world-wide famine from 1975 to 2000.  Ecologist Kenneth Watt predicted that nitrogen buildup in the atmosphere would filter out all light, making all farm land unusable.  Huh?  It might be pretty dark in Jersey, but the sun does come out on occasion.  Watt wasn’t done, though.  He also predicted that by 2000 there would be no crude oil left on the Earth.  As I write this in 2015, a major problem we are having is the lack of additional  storage tanks and tankers for the excess crude oil we are not using.  Well, anybody can make a mistake.

People learn from their mistakes, right?  Not this crowd.  In 2014, Paul Erlich predicted that people will soon turn to cannibalism due to food shortages.  If they do, I hope they eat him first.  You want fries with him?

It is true that anybody can make a mistake, and celebrating Earth Day is the worst mistake that anybody can make.