Barbara says: "respected figures have been forecasting the end of the world pretty much since the beginning of the world."

In the 60's and 70's many experts in California looked around and said that, if current trends were allowed to continue without government regulation, the air quality of California's major metropolitan areas would become so bad by the turn of the millenium that it would be much like Mexico City's air. Voters and regulators took heed, and, in California, the necessary steps were taken, and air quality began improving. The admittedly expensive, and, at the time, unpopular, steps California took to rectify the problem were enormously succesful. Air quality has improved steadily in California's major metropolitan areas ever since, despite massive growth in population and industry. Oh! And by the way, I think it might have actually been Governor Ronald Reagan, deeply in the pockets of the corporate elites even then, who seriously suggestsed that the major cause of LA's smog was emmissions from trees in the surrounding mountains . . .

Mike Williams