Discovery of the Higgs Bosen. People thought it would trigger the end of existence.

The ozone layer hole. Managed to barely dodge that one, just to have fossil fuels eat all the climate benefits that brought us.

Ebooks for the book industry

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.

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 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

Human cloning becoming common. That would be around the time Dolly the sheep died IIRC.

Maybe it did and that's why we're in hell

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.

It's not out of the woods just yet!

There was a vast amount of work that went into mitigating it so thinking it was a whole noise about nothing is disingenuous.

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)

Nobody I'd trust to vote or drive a car believed that.

That was 1997

fixed

The hole in the ozone layer for example.

The ozone layer hole.

Managed to barely dodge that one

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?

Legalizing weed was supposed to create a bunch of new addicts and turn our towns into slums. Turned out just fine.

So about 15 years ago? Right?

Because it is I think. Welcome back to the Dark Ages, population: everyone, torches provided, critical thinking not included.

Same with almost everything in this thread.

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!"

I doubt your doubt.

Dolly was born in 1996. She died in 2003

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep)

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 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)

I guess that's true

Hmm good one.

Good one

India's gradual rise out of poverty is truly impressive.

I mean Iv've never been there, but I've been hearing good things.

It's more like being frustrated how things can be so fucked up.

For the opposite result... Please observe Australia.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We were all panicking a bit about this one. Glad it turned out to be nonsense. Full steam ahead--er... full oil burn everything!

Everything's wrong on your list my dude.

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?

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.

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.

Similarly, legalizing gay marriage was supposed to usher in waves of people wanting to marry animals or something.

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.

I feel like we were expecting this because we were expecting someone to be our parent and force us to make the changes, when in fact nobody is externally enforcing that we stay on a safe climate path, and we are stuck waiting for our own societal self-discipline.

Good one. Although was more before the millenium afaik

How long does it take for a capitalist nation to build itself up?

Idk, look at development of Japan or Korea... Not saying that the culture in India is similar... at all... but capitalism doesn't seem to be there blocker here.

You missed the point. CFCs were mostly manufactured by a tiny number of manufacturers in a few specific industries. Things like refrigerants, spray cans, etc. Governments could easily regulate the handful of CFC producers. Alternative products were quickly found that didn't require people to make major changes in their lives.

The climate change problem is a completely different animal. Billions of vehicles and fossil dependent supply chains sustain the lives of most of the human race. It's taken decades of investment to even develop alternatives for these, let alone completely switching the fleets over. Plus electricity generation. Plus heating. Plus emissions from agriculture and land use. And on and on. Fossil fuels are not just some minor industrial compounds we can phase out and replace. We built an entire civilization around them. And that system is what's currently keeping everyone alive.

We as a species are nature's ultimate pyromaniacs, and we've been tasked with the problem of solving the global coordination problem of the regulation of fire itself.

Looking at the ozone situation and lamenting we haven't solved climate change is like someone lamenting they can't single-handedly take on a million man army, even though their combat prowess was proven when they stepped on an ant.

People just lump both problems into the category of "global environmental issues" and assume they're even in the same universe of difficulty.

You say we, like there is anything that any amount of reusable tote bags and driving less could have done. The damage being done to our climate is primarily being done at a corporate and industrial level. People hate hearing how Capitalism is the bad guy, but profits kept being put over environmentalism. If your company wants to be competitive with companies that don't give a shit, your options are to fight the federal government to implement regulations (expensive and time consuming), or to simply also stop giving a fuck (great next quarter, very easy).

In general, yes, the western world was under the false assumption that the leaders it had were, at the very least, aligned in the interest of self preservation. Many are still living with this false belief today.

I think it's less about societal self discipline though; and more about the incompatibility of the societal hierarchy with working to solve the problem of climate change. The contradictions between the ruling and working class are in conflict when it comes to the priority of climate change. Climate change is an opportunity for further wealth concentration for the ruling class of our society; and that same ruling class has "drank their own Koolaid" in the idea of American and Western exceptionalism.

Capitalism is incapable of addressing the problems of climate change. It's like trying to put out a fire and bringing a bulldozer instead of a firetruck.