Ronald Bailey, reason.com: Thirty Years ago, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The organizers of Earth Day 2000 expect 500 million people around the globe to participate in celebrations, workshops, and demonstrations. Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions. "We have about five more years at the outside to do something." Three decades later, the world hasn't come to an end; if anything, the planet's ecological future has never looked so promising. Now is a good time to look back on the predictions made at the first Earth Day and see how they've held up and what we can learn from them.
