Shortly after the first Earth Day in 1970, radical environmentalists began making bold and nonsensical predictions about just how long our planet would survive. Harvard biologist George Wald, for example, estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” The New York Times editorial board warned that unless we put an end to pollution and started conserving resources, humanity as we knew it would face “possible extinction.” And Denis Hayes, one of the scientists behind the creation of Earth Day, declared that “it is already too late to avoid [a] mass starvation” that would kill millions of people globally within the next several decades.

Fifty-two years later, it’s safe to say that all of these doomsday predictions were wrong — as was the panic that environmentalists stirred up among the public. And yet, it’s still very much present in our education system.