Climate change. We all thought we were gonna have to cut back on consumption, use less fossil fuels, and change our infrastructure entirely to renewable energy.
Thankfully it’s not a problem anymore at all. Our wise leaders just decided to stop talking about it and instead just decided we’d speed the process up, burn fossil fuels for glorified chat bots while draining our fresh water resources.
Thankfully it’s not a problem anymore. Because a problem would imply it’s something that has a solution. We’re far past that point. We’re essentially watching this generation of our oligarchs committing a mass global genocide of the upcoming generations.
Problem solved.
We were all panicking a bit about this one. Glad it turned out to be nonsense. Full steam ahead–er… full oil burn everything!
Don’t worry places like the Himalayas are only warming five times faster than the global average leading to apocalyptic mudslides that killed 1000 people in Nepal.
Acidic rain.
I don’t remember any of the specifics anymore but it boils down to: Trees and plants died in masses, scientists and the general population got together and we changed what caused it.
This is going back a bit longer than 15 years but the myth of the Population Bomb was pretty fucking wrong.
It predicted the mass starvation of hundreds of millions of people due yo food production not keeping up with population growth in the 1970s.
This was averted by mass production of fertilizer through fossil fuels.
I’m sure that won’t come back to bite us in the ass.
Certainly not dangerous to have massive monocultures what could easily be wiped out by disease or heat waves. I’m sure all those people will be able to keep living when we aren’t making as much fertilizer with the destruction of our economies.
We are producing about four times as much food as we consume.
Solar panels wind turbines and nuclear energy have proven to solve all of our issues if we actually put effort into implementing them.
Humanity destroying the entire planet would happen even without food scarcity. Every problem we’ve been presented with has had a solution, but we just didn’t implement it.
Legalizing weed was supposed to create a bunch of new addicts and turn our towns into slums. Turned out just fine.
Similarly, legalizing gay marriage was supposed to usher in waves of people wanting to marry animals or something.
Good one
Ebooks for the book industry
Hmm good one.
Human cloning becoming common. That would be around the time Dolly the sheep died IIRC.
That was 1997
So about 15 years ago? Right?
Dolly was born in 1996. She died in 2003
I think I may be from a different timeline or something, I swear I had 97 in my head and looked it to be sure… Maybe I’m just losing my mind. (Although I was going for birth)
Y2K
Oh shit, what year did you just say it was?
People really gloss over that there was a lot of work done to make sure y2k wouldn’t be a disaster. It wasn’t exactly a hoax, it was averted
The news stories blew the issue way out of proportion. There were claims that anything with a computer in it would stop working at midnight. Cars would crash, planes would fall out of the sky, etc. Y2K was really just a finance and IT problem. The fact is most electronic devices of the time, even ones with a clock, didn’t know what the year was and couldn’t be effected by a short-sighted engineering problem.
I guess that’s true
Same with almost everything in this thread.
My friend told me there was a shit ton of work done to find and fix every instance if the bug, and they managed to do it, which is why things kept going smoothly.
I’ve also heard that in some places virtually nothing was done and no problems occurred anyway.
There was a vast amount of work that went into mitigating it so thinking it was a whole noise about nothing is disingenuous.
The ozone layer hole. Managed to barely dodge that one, just to have fossil fuels eat all the climate benefits that brought us.
And now it’s looking like all the LEO satellites they want to launch will recreate that problem. They all laughed at me when I suggested it.
This was a problem. We just acted to ban CFCs, which solved the problem. Now the ozone hole is recovering. I wouldn’t say it turned out not to be a problem though. The human race just had the brains and corporation to come together and deal with it.
The human race just had the brains and corporation to come together and deal with it.
Why does that sound like such an absurd and faraway fantasy nowadays
Because it is I think. Welcome back to the Dark Ages, population: everyone, torches provided, critical thinking not included.
This is like a runner lamenting how they lossed at the Olympics saying, “how could this have happened? I was the star runner of my third grade class!”
It’s more like being frustrated how things can be so fucked up.
The ozone layer hole.
Managed to barely dodge that one
Discovery of the Higgs Bosen. People thought it would trigger the end of existence.
Maybe it did and that’s why we’re in hell
Nobody I’d trust to vote or drive a car believed that.
It might be very country specific. But gambling houses.
They started to proliferate in my country around 10 years ago, and they said they were going to be the end of our youth. I, myself, went to a lot of actions to stop them.
We failed to stop them.
And 10 years after… Nothing happened. There are no mesurable increase in social problems due to the massive increase in gambling I was told it was going to happen. Also the houses themselves are always empty, people gamble mostly online anyway. But they put so much pressure on us to stop the opening of the physical buildings and cause rhe closure of the ones already opened.
I’m in principle against them still. Just because I don’t like people making money out of people addicted to gambling. But I’m also kind of mad that I spent to much time, effort, and even got sued for what we tried to do to stop them, just for them not really being as much as a threat as I was told they were. And my efforts would have been much better spent elsewhere.
At least I learned a very valuable lesson.
For the opposite result… Please observe Australia.
Is it possible you were successful?
What was the lesson?
None of the objectives were met.
We tried so hard and still were unable to stop any opening, cause any closure or push the legislative changes we wanted (limiting the amount of gambling houses that could be opened). They just opened as many houses as they liked.
My lesson was to not follow anything blindly even if it was said by people I respect. Always analyze by myself and be skeptical of everything.
Gambling online is a hidden problem. Idk gambling is insane, I’m happy I don’t have the money for it.
TV was becoming too good, it was becoming impossible to keep up with all the great stuff coming out. Good thing we managed to avert that, now theres maybe 1 good season of tv every year.
That my job is too easy. I having too much time to play video games, reading, travelling, watching TV, dating.
That my job pays too good. I having so much money that I not knowing what to buy.
That AI is too well developed and be morally used that I having nothing to do. (Well it kind of is given how easily I could be unemployed)
There are some that were fixed, but fixed with great effort. The hole in the ozone layer for example.
My final answer will be overpopulation. Personally though I think the population should be about 1 billion just so I don’t feel quite as much existential dread at my own insignificance.
fixed
The hole in the ozone layer for example.
I doubt your doubt.
1. Obesity pandemic
Ever since semaglutide came on the market, it seems like we’re slowly getting a handle on it.
2. Overpopulation in Africa/Asia
Automation is causing them to stop having children as more jobs require higher education and there’s less jobs around altogether.
3. Poverty in Africa/Asia
Related to overpopulation. China has lifted itself up completely.
India is also doing better every year.
Famines in African nations have severely been reduced these days and all of them are now war related.[edit]
I’m getting some downvotes.
Is anything wrong here?Everything’s wrong on your list my dude.
to me those 3 all seems like valid problems still.
obesity may be solved in a few decades but is still ongoing.
overpopulation in india etc is still a big issue combined with poverty…
a large part of china(mainland) is still suffering in great poverty. places like shanghai/beijing are a very small minority number wise.
India’s gradual rise out of poverty is truly impressive.
I mean Iv’ve never been there, but I’ve been hearing good things.
I have not heard one good thing about India. Please share. As far as I can tell only China has blossomed and it’s incredibly striking. India? … I guess capitalism just doesn’t work. Let’s check back in maybe… 100 years? How long does it take for a capitalist nation to build itself up? 500 years?
