The Year 2000

I grew up in the 80s. The Cold War was in its final stages, and the future should have been as bright as the neon clothes that everyone was wearing. Instead, we got a steady stream of gloom and doom about environmental catastrophism. Let me give you a quick look at some of what elementary school children were told 25 years ago about how things would look by the year 2000 for those of you who have forgotten or who are too young to know:

• Landfills would be full
• Fossil fuels would have entirely used.
• Rainforests and their bio-diverse ecosystems would be wiped out.
• The ozone layer would be completely gone causing blindness in wild animals and anyone who did not wear sunglasses.
• Smog would be make it difficult for people to breathe anywhere in the world.
• Global warming would result in it being too hot for people to survive at the equator, and the sea levels rising would have wiped out coastal regions and all of Florida.
• In short, the Earth would likely be so damaged that we would need to live on colonies on the moon or other planets. 

You think that I am exaggerating these claims? In science class (multiple years no less) during the lead up to the eventual opening of Biosphere 2, we were given the assignment of designing moon colonies. (My mom may still have a completed project or two stashed in a box of my class projects somewhere.) The traditional 3 Rs of Reading 'Riting, and 'Rithmatic were replaced with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. There were stories about people protesting excessive packaging in cereal boxes by leaving the box at the grocery store and taking the inner bag with them when they finished at the checkout lane. McDonald's started making the benches at their playgrounds out of compressed styrofoam packaging from Big Macs. People who used plastic bags instead of paper ones were practically evil incarnate.

We are now 25 years down the road and 15 years past the due date on these predictions. None have happened. (Paper bag usage at the grocery store is now more evil than plastic. We have always been at war with Eastasia.) You want to know why people do not believe in Global Warming (or Climate Change, or whatever it is called today)? You want to know why folks are skeptical about your dire predictions? This would be it.