A New Global Warming Video...From 1958

[depakid]

Impressive...

You may already know that FDR and Truman were talking about universal health care as far back at the 1940s, but did you know that people were already addressing the issue of global warming as far back as 1958? The video to your right contains scenes from the 1958 Frank Capra produced documentary The Unchained Goddess, which had some startling predictions for the future.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/56850/

[slackmaster]

1. They were still talking about using nuclear power to melt the polar ice intentionally in '58

I haven't seen that Capra film. Sounds like a must.

[whistle]

3. One idea back in the 1950's was to mine the polar ice and transporting

...the resulting fresh fossil water to areas such as Africa and the deserts of Southern Asia and Australia for irrigation and human consumption.

I remember an issue of Popular Mechanics or Popular Science showing how this would be done with mining colonies, super machinery and super tankers sailing across the Indian Ocean. These were amazing visions for a young person to ponder and have hope for the future. I was in my early teens at the time and everything seemed possible. Instead people like Dick Cheney and Big Oil CEOs took those plans it seems and developed a system of extracting and looting fossil fuels from beneath those same regions of the world to create our own environmental disaster and economic collapse guided by greed and ignoring the science and the consequences of one sided thinking driven by only the profit motive.

[whistle]

2. I remember those files from my high school years. There was a whole

....series of these featuring the solar system and various science subjects. I have actually wondered where these films went as I pretty much had forgotten the titles and who produced them. Thanks for posting this particular one.

I seem to recall that one of the scenes visually showed miles of railroad cars hauling endless trains of coal and oil and other natural resources, making a prediction that in 50 years (which would have made the target year 1958 + 50 = 2008) that we would run low or completely out of those forms of energy. Was that in this particular film?

It came across as a feature film to promote the development of alternative sources of energy and power such as nuclear fusion, wind and solar. I'd love to watch that film again as well as the other films in the series. It would be fun to compare how close their predications came to what is the reality and knowledge we have acquired today.