[QUOTE=Stout]
Well, the ozone layer isn’t getting the press it used to back in the 1980’s, now I know that we, as a society have taken steps to reduce the production of ozone depleting chemicals, and some scientists are predicting that the hole will be “healed” by the middle of the century. OK, so what happened to the world ending hype that surrounded this issue ? Remember, skin cancers, sunburned livestock, the end of plant life as we knew it were all going to combine to present us with a world far different from the one we know and love today. It didn’t.
Do we still need to be concerned about acid rain? I know it wasn’t really as doomsdayish as the hole or global warming.
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It should be pointed out that much of the reason that massive predictions about the horror that would eventually befall us if nothing were done about X ended up not being true is because we did do something about X. Just not necessarily as much, as quick, or as government-controlled-oversight as the doomsayers wanted. Actions were taken to reduce pollution and CFC use in the 1980’s and 1990’s, both by individual consumers who had heard the message, and by small governmental shifts in policy.
This is why “peak oil” actually isn’t going to be a crisis: because everyone who states that it will be a crisis makes the assumption that A) there can and will be no innovation that changes the way the world uses oil in any significant way within the next fifty years and B) the great mass of Americans are stupid sheep who can’t think beyond whatever is cheapest and easiest for immediate use. Ergo, all solutions to the eventual “crisis” must come from the benevolent, wise government officials who will legislate us into compliance, or else we’re just doomed.
And meanwhile, scientists are figuring out how to make modern plastics out of corn rather than oil. And who’s their biggest buyer? Wal-Mart. Is it because the government has enacted drastic new legislation of environmental correctness? No, it’s because enough consumers - the great mass of stupid sheep, according to peak oil authors - are worried about oil-based products that Wal-Mart thinks it can use alternative plastics as a selling point.
I admit that I’m biased by experience. When I was in junior high school, the thing that most left an impression from my social studies class was the chart my textbook showed indicating how the world would deplete certain major metal supplies and when. Copper being extinct in 2010 or so, tin following in the mid teens, etc. But no one’s saying that now, are they? No one’s claiming that we’re going to be without water supplies in twenty years because of global overpopulation, but in the early '70’s authors were saying that by our time the world would have no food or water for 70-80% of its inhabitants. Predictions that were made invalid by changing trends in manufacturing and usage, as well as awareness of recycling and environmental concerns.
