Chicken Little Comes Home to Roost

Outside of reality shows, idiot celebrities, and the abduction and subsequent murder of white girls, there's not much else that will instantaneously transfix the population of this country (and most others for that matter) than a dire prediction about the future of our civilization.

We can see this phenomenon manifest itself in otherwise harmless mediums like movies and TV shows (I Am Legend, Armageddon, Soylent Green - the list goes on), or it can grow into something that shapes national and global economic policy (the Church of Global Warming, for example). Most modern religions have some sort of doomsday prophecy at their core, and every now and then an extremist sect gains national attention for their "the end is nigh" predictions.

The point is that pretty much since man organized into complex civilization, he has predicted the end of that civilization. Here's a quick list of the most recent instances of the end days:

- In the late 1960's and 1970's, many a scientist were absolutely certain that the human species would very shortly outgrow the natural resources of the Earth. Mass starvation, famine, riots, and other fun things would almost certainly end mankind's dominance of the planet. Paul Enrich wrote a book about it - The Population Bomb; and there were several computer models that backed up the doomsday scenario.

- Toward the end of the 70's, perhaps in response to the absolute silliness that was disco, the flavor of the day was global cooling. Another ice age was fast approaching, and unless immediate action was taken, mankind would meet its end.

- Global warming came about in the late 1980's, spread during the 90's, and today it's accepted as scientific fact by most people. For an excellent treatise on global warming, read this speech by Michael Crichton.

- Finally, there was the Y2K scare. Even yours truly was expecting a major societal breakdown when the clock struck 12:00 on January 1, 2000. But just like the multitude of religious apocalypse predictions, nothing happened. It was a New Years like every other.

ABC News must have felt that not enough people were concerned about the end of the world. As such, they have a special coming in September that ask the ominous questions, "Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse?"

Awesome. I love it when unproved theories are passed off as scientific fact. What's better is that they're asking regular people to submit videos of their fears and predictions based on their observations of the world. Talk about crack journalism - two hours of the people that say the tornado sounded like a big freight train are going to explain how to save the human civilization.

I'm actually kind of thankful that come September, I will be so wrapped up in law school homework that I won't have time to watch this special.