“FLASHBACK: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015,” via Scott Whitlock of NewsBusters, who writes:
New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.
The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, “It’s June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.” (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: “Gas reached over $9 a gallon.” (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.)
On June 12, 2008, correspondent Bob Woodruff revealed that the program “puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.”
As one expert warns that in 2015 the sea level will rise quickly, a visual shows New York City being engulfed by water. The video montage includes another unidentified person predicting that “flames cover hundreds of miles.”
Then-GMA co-anchor Chris Cuomo appeared frightened by this future world. He wondered, “I think we’re familiar with some of these issues, but, boy, 2015? That’s seven years from now. Could it really be that bad?”
Obviously, no one at ABC thought so, since the network never moved their corporate headquarters from its tony Upper West Side address, despite attempting to scare the crap out of gullable low information viewers that Manhattan would be flooded in seven years. And notice that the network never cut back any of their entertainment programming or sports coverage, despite the enormous reduction in carbon output and the incredible statement it would make. (Insert the trademarked Insta-Rejoinder here. No, not the one about “I don’t want to hear an other goddamn word about my carbon footprint”; the other one.)
Click over to NewsBusters for the 2008 ABC video of yet another not-so-final countdown based on global cooling/warming/climate change/climate chaos/whatever it’s called this week. We’ve rounded up loads of them ourselves; click here and just keep scrolling.
But why does the left keeping hyping their religious end-of-the-world sandwich board-style doomsday tone despite being called out on so many busted flushes? At Forbes, Steve Hayward of Power Line explains “Why The Left Needs Climate Change:”
The need to believe in oneself as part of the agency of human salvation runs deep for leftists and environmentalists who have made their obsessions a secular religion. And humanity doesn’t need salvation if there is no sin in the first place. Hence human must be sinners—somehow—in need of redemption from the left.
I got to thinking about this when reading a short passage from an old book by Canadian philosopher George Grant, Philosophy in the Mass Age:
“During the excitement over Sputnik, it was suggested that the Americans were deeply depressed by Russian success. I thought this was a wrong interpretation. Rather, there was a great sigh of relief from the American elites, for now there was an immediate practical objective to be achieved, a new frontier to be conquered—outer space.”
This tracks closely with Kenneth Minogue’s diagnosis of liberalism in his classic The Liberal Mind. Minogue compared liberals to medieval dragon hunters, who sought after dragons to slay even after it was clear they didn’t exist. The liberal, like the dragon hunter, “needed his dragons. He could only live by fighting for causes—the people, the poor, the exploited, the colonially oppressed, the underprivileged and the underdeveloped. As an ageing warrior, he grew breathless in pursuit of smaller and smaller dragons—for the big dragons were now harder to come by.”
Hence on college campuses today the liberal mind is relentlessly hunting after “microaggressions,” which is pretty pathetic as dragons of injustice go. Environmentalists are still after the fire-breathing dragon of climate change, now that previous dragons like the population bomb have disappeared into the medieval mists—so much so that even the New York Times recently declared the population bomb to have been completely wrongheaded.
Or perhaps a better metaphor for true-believing environmentalism is drug addiction: the addictive need for another rush of euphoria, followed by the crash or pains of withdrawal, and the diminishing returns of the next fix. For there’s always a next fix for environmentalists: fracking, bee colony collapse disorder, de-forestation, drought, floods, plastic bags . . . the list is endless.
And it’s all built on William James’ century old metaphor defining socialism as the “moral equivalent of war” to organize society and end-run democracy and freedom. Perhaps it’s time to update the playbook, fellas. Or join the rest of us here in reality? You may say I’m a dreamer…
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