VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON APOCALYPTIC PROGRESSIVISM:

Progressive narratives insisted that man-caused carbon releases prompted not only record heat and drought but also record coolness and precipitation within a few subsequent months.

And in Alice in Wonderland fashion, just as drilling was supposedly no cure for oil shortages, building reservoirs was no remedy for water scarcity.

In the same manner, neglecting the maintenance and building of roads in California created a transportation crisis. Until recently, the preferred solution to the state’s road mayhem and gridlock wasn’t more freeway construction but instead high-speed rail — as if substandard streets and highways would force millions of frustrated drivers to use expensive state-owned mass transit.

These days, shortages of credit, water, oil, or adequate roads are no longer seen as age-old challenges to a tragic human existence. Instead of overcoming them with courage, ingenuity, technology, and scientific breakthroughs, they are seen as existential “teachable moments.”

In other words, crises are not all bad — if they lead the public to more progressive government.

But the left’s Chicken Little mindset dates back decades. Even before the zany predictions made on the first “Earth Day” in 1970, you can watch 1968 presidential campaign ads by Bobby Kennedy loaded with eco-apocalyptic predictions that explicitly repudiate his brother’s optimistic vision of an expansive “New Frontier.” How can you continually believe the world is coming to end for a half century?

Related: Jerry Brown “acknowledges other states aren’t buying his climate hype.”

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)