This page was exported from Shelburne Free Press [ https://shelburnefreepress.ca ] Export date:Fri Mar 29 14:28:09 2024 / +0000 GMT ___________________________________________________ Title: Happy days ahead --------------------------------------------------- By BRIAN LOCKHART “Happy days are here again, The skies above are clear again, So let's sing a song of cheer again, Happy days are here again.” Those are the lyrics to one of the very very few popular songs that had an upbeat message. Just google the lyrics to any song and see what you find. There isn't much that is very positive. Girl's heart is broken. Boy's heart is broken. Country boy's dog got run over by a car and his wife is cheating with the Baker boys. The Eve of Destruction. Blowin' in the Wind. Hey Joe, “I'm gonna shoot my ole lady down.” The Beatles – Nowhere Man, Elenor Rigby, Revolution, Helter Skelter. Hit me Baby One More Time. Song writers, for the most part, seem to be a rather morose bunch. Or maybe it's just because happy songs don't sell. Doom and gloom sells newspapers, makes the evening news watchable, sells space on Yahoo, and fills charitable organizations' bank accounts with dollars. There's no better way to raise money for those in poverty than to show some kid in ragged clothing with flies perched around his eyes and ask the public to send in the amount they normally spend on a cup of coffee to make sure that kid can run after a bag of grain tossed out of the back of a UNICEF helicopter.  It seems there have been few times in history when the general population is feeling really good about their situation and what is to come. Our future is once again doomed due to climate change. Yes, the climate is apparently changing and within a few short years humanity will be dying off leaving only the remnants of our once thriving planet to be overrun by vegetation and wind blown dust storms. Obviously this dilemma means future generations do not have a future – at all – or so it seems we are being told. The prediction of global catastrophe is not a new concept. For some reason people have always predicted the end of the world. I recall being in a high school science class and hearing the teacher say that due to the current level of pollution, the world would be entering a new ice age within 20 years and to expect our future to be spent living in ice caves. That was a short-lived prediction.  End of the world predictions have been going on for eons. In the early days most predictions were religion-based. In fact through the first couple thousand years of civilization there was always some religious leader predicting they were at the end times.  It was a way of convincing your flock to get their act together and make sure they donated money to the church to save their souls. As the black death swept across Europe during the middle ages, many people were convinced, and rightly so, that humanity was going to die out. Nope, humanity bounced back and actually thrived. Noted scientists have contributed to the theory of world destruction over the years with a few off-the-wall theories. A quick check reveals comets for some reason really scare a lot of people and several scientist have predicted an approaching comet will hit the earth and cause mass destruction.  It hasn't happened yet. Then there are the seers and prophets that people follow for some reason. From Nostradamus to Edgar Cayce, prophets have been always predicting doom and gloom across the planet.  Even 454 years after his death, people still look to Nostradamus' quatrains to explain current or coming events.  Cayce predicted many catastrophic events including the earth's poles shifting and California having a massive earthquake that would cause the entire state to disappear into the Pacific ocean. California is still there and the earth hasn't tipped over to one side.  But why is society always fixated on the negatives of the future?  We are stewards of this planet. There's no doubt about that.  However the positive measures taken are always placed on the back page of history.  There are all sort of projects currently under way from massive tree planting efforts to small local groups who monitor local waterways and are always striving to improve the quality of water. Climate change may be a real event, but it doesn't mean future generations are doomed. Just do a search on the main headlines over the past 30 years and a trend becomes apparent. The media will follow an agenda for several years until moving on to the next big thing. It happens over and over again. So here's a bold prediction. In 100 years the world will be pretty much as it is now and has been for the past several thousand years.  Think positive! --------------------------------------------------- Images: --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Post date: 2020-01-23 13:51:50 Post date GMT: 2020-01-23 18:51:50 Post modified date: 2020-01-23 13:52:07 Post modified date GMT: 2020-01-23 18:52:07 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Export of Post and Page as text file has been powered by [ Universal Post Manager ] plugin from www.gconverters.com