People and Politics by Patrick Roberts

Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day, compares global climate collapse to Irish famine

Posted on Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 09:29 AM

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Denis Hayes, the Irish American founder of Earth Day, has warned that global ecological collapse would be an incredible disaster,far worse than any economic crisis.
"Global ecological collapse would be a dust bowl without California, an Irish potato famine without America." he told a recent conference.

"We’re still breathing molecules from Caesar’s last breath. Our ecology is more fragile than the economy. We recovered from tulip mania, the South Sea bubble and the savings and loan crisis, even the Great Depression."

He stated that bringing the economy back to "normalcy" wouldn’t be good news because it will accelerate the global ecological bubble.

"Current accounting practices don’t address our ecological storehouse." he stated
"Mother Nature doesn’t do bailouts." The problem is that our economic system places its highest value on consumption, rather than the accumulation of real wealth. The faster resources, like wood, move from the forest to the dump, the higher our GDP climbs."

Hayes said "the single biggest factor in a collapse is often when the rich and powerful can shield themselves from the consequences of their actions."

Hayes borrowed a page from Jared Diamond’s Collapse: "How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," and warned that many civilizations that degraded their environment never recovered… Easter Island, classical Mayan civilization and the Greenland Norse.

Hayes, an Irish American from California, dropped out of Harvard to start Earth Day in 1970.

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Watereskhill | Apr 22, 2010, 11:23 PM EDT

It's abysmal being seated next to someone like this at a dinner table. Not an ounce of humour. Therories. Hypothesis. And doom. Someone should take him to his espoused 'Easter Island' and leave him there to wander round the stone heads as dull as his own.

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IrishAndProud | Apr 22, 2010, 05:36 PM EDT

Denis Hayes is a typical, delusional fool, running on hype (as well as 'empty'). The only thing that's collapsing is the whole man-made 'global warming' (oh, excuse me -- 'climate change') argument.

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STEPcoach | Apr 22, 2010, 10:40 AM EDT

I find it amusing that Earth Day was originally founded because of a media-driven panic over a "new ice age" that was being thrust upon us by big governments and industries. Yet today the same movement cries about just the opposite effects from the same sources! Pick your complaint, baby bear - is it to cold or too hot? Sounds like a fairytale story to me!

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