Around the first Earth Day, environmental scientists made dire predictions about pollution. When the synthetic pesticide DDT caused bird populations to plummet, as Rachel Carson documented in Silent Spring , there were no market incentives to reverse that trend.
An increase in lead poisoning or asthma creates a market for medicines and treatment, but not for decreasing the pollutants that cause them. And so on that first Earth Day, people fighting oil spills, power plant pollution, pesticides and litter protested in the streets.
The government responded to public outcry, activism and the collective predictions of the era by creating our most powerful environmental laws—the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and others.
And the regulations have worked. After DDT was banned in , populations of bald eagles and other birds rebounded. In the late s, 88 percent of American children had elevated lead levels in their blood; after leaded gasoline was phased out, that number dropped to less than 1 percent. Pollutants continue to cause problems; the horrific case of lead poisoning in Flint show that regulations are not perfect solutions. But those predictions and the resulting activism during the first Earth Day drove change.
This is evident in the loudest parts of the climate change discussion. Extremists on one side are certain the world is going to end; extremists on the other are certain everything is fine and climate change is a conspiracy. The truth is more complicated. If we don't act because a previous prediction "failed," we face an array of human suffering, which will hit the poorest and disadvantaged the hardest. If the US population had grown by the same rate it did between and , it would have exceeded 1 billion in Hothouse vegetables.
Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer, said Watkins, with electric wires under the soil and large gardens under glass. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants to grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of coloured light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early. Large gardens under glass were already a reality, says Philip Norman of the Garden Museum in London, but he was correct to predict the use of electricity.
Although coloured lights and electric currents did not take off, they were probably experimented with. But the earliest item we have is a booklet Electricity in Your Garden detailing electrically warmed frames, hotbeds and cloches and electrically heated greenhouses, issued by the British Electrical Development Association. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span.
Watkins foresaw cameras and screens linked by electric circuits, a vision practically realised in the 20th Century by live international television and latterly by webcams. Leonardo da Vinci had talked about this, says Nilsson, but Watkins was taking it further. There weren't many people that far-sighted.
Bigger fruit. Lots of larger varieties of fruit have been developed in the past century, but Watkins was over-optimistic with regard to strawberries. While hover cars are still fantasy, the iris scanning of Minority Report is a reality for many air travellers. In the film, crime has been eliminated with the aid of technology that constantly monitors citizens. Wall-mounted devices scan human eyes to confirm identity.
Even though they cannot be used on moving individuals, as in Minority Report, iris detection devices are used at border agencies all over the world, and were in use at Manchester and Birmingham airports until relatively recently.
Facial recognition technology has been developed and has been rolled out in 25 bars in San Francisco. In this case the technology is not being used for national security - but to provide a snapshot of the type of crowd frequenting these establishments. The iris recognition technology led to Anderton being bombarded by images targeted specifically at him. Already, internet advertising can be personally tailored to match users' interests.
The parallels between services like Google's DoubleClick and the Minority Report scenario have been made. There has also been much discussion about Facebook ads being based on information users share about themselves.
In , a report by the Centre for Future Studies predicted that advertisements would soon be able to adapt to our moods - a technology known as "gladvertising". And according to Digital Ape , the effect of Intel's new digital signage systems will be video feeds that can tailor ads to the age and gender of shoppers. Intel itself says the system will release "commercial, financial and entertainment information to specific people groups at specific times". So perhaps the ads that targeted Anderton are not too far away.
Predictive policing is a big part of Minority Report, in which three psychics, known as pre-cogs, have the ability to see into the future and therefore help stop criminal activity. Obviously no force in the world is going to be putting psychics at the heart of their strategy, but there has been growing interest in the idea of mapping future crime trends and even predicting which individuals could become a problem.
In , Tony Blair said state intervention could become "pre-birth even" as it was possible to predict that children born in some circumstances could later become anti-social.
Memphis Police Department in Tennessee is working with IBM on a system that analyses crime trends to predict where police should be deployed. From the depths of the West of Europe, A young child will be born of poor people, He who by his tongue will seduce a great troop; His fame will increase towards the realm of the East.
Beasts ferocious with hunger will cross the rivers, The greater part of the battlefield will be against Hister. Into a cage of iron will the great one be drawn, When the child of Germany observes nothing.
But his family was middle class , not impoverished. Hitler did rise to power in part due to his oratory abilities by his tongue will seduce , and did initiate WWII a great troop by invading Poland. Some Nostradamus supporters have posited that Hister is a mispelling of Hitler, but it's actually the Latin term for the Danube. What happened: Charles de Gaulle was a three time leader of France chief of triple Gaul.
Then, he became prime minister of the provisional post-WWII government. Other than that, this quatrain appears to have little else to do with the famous French politician. Near the gates and within two cities There will be scourges the like of which was never seen, Famine within plague, people put out by steel, Crying to the great immortal God for relief. What happened: In early August the United States dropped two atomic weapons on the island of Japan, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki within two cities.
The cities were devastated, and many survivors of the blast suffered from radiation poisoning crying to the great immortal God for relief. In the wake of the war, Japan also went through a food shortage crisis famine within plague. The great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt, An evil deed foretold by the bearer of a petition. According to the prediction, another falls at night time. Conflict at Reims, London and a pestilence in Tuscany.
What happened: President John Kennedy great man received numerous death threats petition over the course of his presidency. While visiting Dallas on November 22, , the president was gunned down thunderbolt.
The assassination shocked and devastated the nation. His brother Bobby Kennedy was later assassinated just after midnight on June 5, another falls at night time. The conflict in Reims and London and sickness in Tuscany, however, doesn't fit in with the assassination of the Kennedys. Earthshaking fire from the center of the Earth Will cause tremors around the New City.
Two great rocks will war for a long time, Then Arethusa will redden a new river.
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