this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026

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What's something that 15 years ago looked like it would be a problem in the future, but didn't turn out to be? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] wheezy@lemmy.ml 47 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (7 children)

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.

[–] callouscomic@lemmy.zip 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I'll never forget when the U.S. state of North Carolina made a policy disallowing any government official or documentation to reference or acknowledge the existence of climate change. It was their response to a state study noting the effect of rising sea levels on their coastal towns.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Convicted Criminal Florida Senator Rick Scott did that when he was the Convicted Criminal Governor of Florida. I believe that he was the first to pull that nonsense, and then everyone else started copying him.

Did I mention that he's a Convicted Criminal? I like to remind people that Rick Scott is a Convicted Criminal as often as possible, because Convicted Criminal Florida Senator Rick Scott HATES when anyone mentions that Rick Scott is a Convicted Criminal.

[–] Zoop@beehaw.org 3 points 5 days ago

I like your style! Keep up the good work. :)

[–] dropdrip@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] lenabee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 5 days ago

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).

[–] wheezy@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

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.

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[–] atomicorange@lemmy.world 59 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

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

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[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 48 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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

[–] MML@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

That was 1997

[–] thelardboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 6 days ago

So about 15 years ago? Right?

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Dolly was born in 1996. She died in 2003

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

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[–] CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 11 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 5 days ago

That was avoided by "the green revolution" i.e. new ways of producing fertilizers. It just kicked the can down the road and made everything worse honestly.

[–] HasturInYellow@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] blackberry28@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago

Well, we haven't reached the peak yet, tho. Afaik global population is going to peak at around 10 billion people somewhere in the 60s. We will see how much land climate change will render unusable for farming until then as well. So a food shortage is still not completely off the table, I think. Well, at least if we continue to use most of the crops to feed livestock, and not us humans directly.

And if not food, but access to enough fresh water willl probably be a huge issue in the future.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 days ago

For the opposite result... Please observe Australia.

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[–] Crotaro@beehaw.org 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I work for a company that, among other things, helps monitor NOx and SOx emissions at power plants and other polluting facilities. Trust me, this is still something we're still very worried about and barely keeping a handle on

[–] Crotaro@beehaw.org 1 points 4 days ago

Really? I thought it was mostly solved by regulations that require filters at the industrial sites (and aren't those used in Diesel cars, too?). Actually, what happens with the gunked-up filter material? Can the captured sulfur and nitrogen be used? I think you can use nitrogen as a fertilizer?

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Good one. Although was more before the millenium afaik

[–] Crotaro@beehaw.org 1 points 4 days ago

True, i looked up a bit more information on it and apparently it was at its height around the 80s, so I may have misremembered time a little bit.

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[–] Gorillatactics@hexbear.net 16 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 days ago

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)

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