Fifty-one years ago I was studying the projection for life on Earth. We knew the two most important factors were global warming and population growth. We knew CO₂ was going to raise the planets temperature causing the climate bands to shift toward the Poles. It would cause the glaciers to melt and raise the ocean levels. This would cause massive permanent flooding of coastal cities and portions of many states. A 300 foot increase impacted food production. Increasing need to energy would increase the CO₂ levels and increase temperatures causing further disruption.

            At that time the population was a sustainable 3.5 billion. The actual numbers have matched projections. Those projections haven’t changed. We are still looking at doubling again within a century. Some optimists said the seas could feed us, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. We have managed to feed the higher income people but those billions at the bottom are going to suffer even more with wider areas becoming unproductive.

            We didn’t consider wars in our discussions on migration. We saw the people in Central America and Mexico crossing our border, and Africans into Europe.

            All of those projections have rung true. What we didn’t consider was anti-science lunacy, mountains of garbage, chemical and plastics damage to the environment, and political denial of facts. We also didn’t consider a loss of life on the magnitude of World War II.

            The future is still very bleak.