I remember the last time Chicken Little sunk her teeth this deep into public awareness. We had seemingly responsible scientists reporting on the nightly news that AIDs would have decimated the earth's population by the year 2000. How is it we forget these panics so quickly and jump whole heartedly into the next one with such reckless abandon?

--Jed Marum

Jed, if I remember correctly, the effect of the scare to which you refer was that people became more mindful about not having unprotected sex. And it's just possible that those very precautions are responsible for the fact that the worst case scenario to which you refer didn't take place. Your example only lends even more credence to the idea that we should take necessary precautions before it's too late.

Let me ask you this... would you put yourself at risk of contracting AIDs unnecessarily? If not, why then, would you want to put the earth at risk unnecessarily? Especially since there's no way to predict for certain what will happen if we don't?