President Carter Tried to Warn Us

 Entering the Twenty-First Century--The Global 2000 Report To The President

 

The Global 2000 Report to the President was a report commissioned during the last year Carter Administration. Physicist Gerald O. Barney was the director of the study that the press at the time declared was “The Doomsday Report.”

Volume one of the study was a warning that rapid population growth, pollution, and resource depletion would have dramatic consequences for people alive in the year 2000. While the population growth problem now isn’t about too many people but not enough kids to take care of seniors, the pollution and resource depletion issues are even worse than the report predicted.

And like any comprehensive report prepared by a competent government, volume two reviewed the potential for global warming and climate change. I make the “competent government” distinction to compare it to the federal clusterfuck we’ve been dealing with since Reagan. And especially now in February 2025 as a pack of Elmo’s parasites have been loosened into government computers and firing vital personnel on what appears to be whims.

Where the Global 2000 report gets terrifyingly prophetic for me is how it predicted the rise of authoritarian governments. In short, with a growing population producing more pollution and with resources becoming scarce social unrest could cause the authoritarian governments to come to power. I don’t remember if the report made any distinction between the Western world or the non-aligned countries that back in 1980 were in far worse developmental shape than now.

Of course, in 1980 the Soviet Union and the rest of the communist world was still up and running with those countries already running authoritarian to almost totalitarian.

Back when I first read the report I did not even entertain the idea the United States would respond to twenty-first centuries challenges by adopting an authoritarian government. Where it’s more shameful for the United States is that we have the resources to mitigate the worst aspects of climate change, pollution, and resource depletion.

Our flaw, worthy of an ancient Greek tragedy, was our misdirected idea that capitalism was the reason the Soviet-style Communism failed. The American government has never been the beacon of total justice and light white folks like me were indoctrinated to believe from the moment we entered kindergarten. But it was close enough to that ideal that it could evolve and grow. Soviet-communism was no better than Czarist-Russia right from the beginning.

John Steinbeck defined our collective societal failure perfectly when he said: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Capitalism is America’s Jonestown Kool-Aid and from the moment a child can count to ten their whole existence is geared to making as much money as possible. Yes, exceptions exist in the form of individuals and groups but as a whole, the chief religion of the United States is in fact Capitalism.

And everything went along fine until changes in global economics and advancing technology made 1950s era American capitalism a dying dinosaur. During the late 60’s to the mid-80’s the rich were able to maneuver their wealth to take advantage of the new economic realities while the blue collar types were repeatedly betrayed. They utterly failed to adapt to the new requirements like demanding better education and reigning in the rich. Republican politicians took up the banner or eternal tax cuts and trickle-down economics.

By the 1990s there was a growing discontent in white folks who believe their country and advantages had been snatched from them. They found no other way to explain how their economic situation was staying the same or getting worse.

This is when the rich created a propaganda network designed solely to inflame the growing working poor resentment. From the moment Fox News began broadcasting it never strayed far from blaming all of society’s failings on minorities and the poor. It was the perfect protection for the rich elites, they had a scapegoat and supplied the working poor with a mirage that they too could live their life if all the welfare queens and illegal immigrants were made to work.

In my opinion, this is how we have arrived at our authoritarian present. Trump is just a symptom of a disease that we have largely inflicted on ourselves. Our supposed moral and ethical valves have been sacrificed at the altar of greed and our long held fears and prejudices.

Got to hand it to the now late President Carter, the Global 2000 Report is a masterpiece economic forecasting. I just never believed the United States would fall into that trap.

Side Note: Its been years since I read the entire report and I seem to remember that it speculated this economic and societal dark age would last until the 2040s. I just don’t have the time to dig through it again to confirm.

Side Note 2: Since the Global 2000 Report came out at the very end of the Carter Administration with the press giving it a lot of publicity, Reagan’s people were extra quick to publish their own saying the future was bright and there was nothing to worry about. It only takes a few active brain cells to see that was a lie.