BOO
A lifetime of listening to predictions, along with scare raising statistics, has left me somewhat jaded. In 1953 my third grade teacher told me that the end of the world was very near. She based her prediction on the establishment of the Nation State of Israel in 1948. This is one of the prophesies in Revelation coming to pass, and I can easily understand how my teacher arrived at her prediction. But for me, a mere boy of eight years, I was very unsettled at the idea that my life here on earth was going to be cut short.
A few years later we were practicing climbing under our desks in preparation for an attack by the Soviet Union. I had two neighbors who were building concrete bunkers in their front yards and equipping them for an extended stay underground. I don't want to make light of this threat, it was very real. What I want to convey is worrying unnecessairly about predicted events. We were told that real butter was bad for you, and only margarine would do you no harm. Then it was changed to the opposite. The same thing was true of eggs. The food list continues along with supplements that the body supposedly cannot live without.
Just a couple of days ago, we passed the 300 million mark of persons living in the U.S.A. For the doomsayers who have been predicting catastrophe by the population explosion, this does not bode well for their cause. Radical ecologists and "greens," have been telling us that we are running out of natural resources. The earth cannot sustain such exploitation. 1968--in "The Population Bomb," distinguished scientist Paul Ehrlich declared, "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
1972--in"The Limits to Growth," the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993.
1976--Lowell Ponte published a huge bestseller called "The Cooling: Has the New Ice Age Already Begun? Can We Survive?
1977--Jimmy Carter confidently predicted that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade. He announced this on T.V. to the nation.
Can you guess what my sense is about Al Gore's "Global Warming?" We fret about second hand smoke and banning peanut butter in schools.
It gives me great pleasure to have outlived all of the previous predictions, but the followers of Chicken Little are still out there and they are more boisterous than ever.
A lifetime of listening to predictions, along with scare raising statistics, has left me somewhat jaded. In 1953 my third grade teacher told me that the end of the world was very near. She based her prediction on the establishment of the Nation State of Israel in 1948. This is one of the prophesies in Revelation coming to pass, and I can easily understand how my teacher arrived at her prediction. But for me, a mere boy of eight years, I was very unsettled at the idea that my life here on earth was going to be cut short.
A few years later we were practicing climbing under our desks in preparation for an attack by the Soviet Union. I had two neighbors who were building concrete bunkers in their front yards and equipping them for an extended stay underground. I don't want to make light of this threat, it was very real. What I want to convey is worrying unnecessairly about predicted events. We were told that real butter was bad for you, and only margarine would do you no harm. Then it was changed to the opposite. The same thing was true of eggs. The food list continues along with supplements that the body supposedly cannot live without.
Just a couple of days ago, we passed the 300 million mark of persons living in the U.S.A. For the doomsayers who have been predicting catastrophe by the population explosion, this does not bode well for their cause. Radical ecologists and "greens," have been telling us that we are running out of natural resources. The earth cannot sustain such exploitation. 1968--in "The Population Bomb," distinguished scientist Paul Ehrlich declared, "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death."
1972--in"The Limits to Growth," the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993.
1976--Lowell Ponte published a huge bestseller called "The Cooling: Has the New Ice Age Already Begun? Can We Survive?
1977--Jimmy Carter confidently predicted that "we could use up all of the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade. He announced this on T.V. to the nation.
Can you guess what my sense is about Al Gore's "Global Warming?" We fret about second hand smoke and banning peanut butter in schools.
It gives me great pleasure to have outlived all of the previous predictions, but the followers of Chicken Little are still out there and they are more boisterous than ever.
posted by Terry L. Burr | 1:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home