Do arrefecimento global (em 1975)

Ontem falei aqui sobre este senhor, o Professor de Stanford, Paul Ehrlich, especialista em elaborar profecias que teimam em não se concretizar. Ora não deixa de ser curioso que este homem, um dos grandes ícones do ambientalismo militante que chegou a propor a esterilização forçada de milhões para combater a sobrepopulação, tenha alertado o mundo para o fenómeno do arrefecimento global, exactamente o inverso da mania que agora nos assola. Ora vejam só este excerto retirado do número da Newsweek de Abril de 1975:

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually… Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states. To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists… are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.