The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

• H. L. Mencken

In 1969, the world’s most famous environmental scientist (Paul Ehrlich of Stanford) warned  we would all die by 1989 in a cloud of blue steam.

“The trouble with almost all environmental problems,” says Paul R. Ehrlich, the population biologist, “is that by the time’ we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead.”

“We must realize that unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years”

• New York Times   August 10, 1969, Page 53

FOE OF POLLUTION SEES LACK OF TIME   The New York Times

A year later he said we would run out of water by 1974, and out of food by 1980.

06 Oct…