That is the tendency to ignore change and use straight line analysis, directly toward catastrophe. One hundred years ago, the major means of personal transportation was the horse. Alarmists then predicted that within a few decades, all the major cities of the world would be buried hip-deep in horse manure, resulting in rampant disease and unliveable cities. In addition to solving the immediate horse-dung problem, productivity and efficiency also increased enormously as a result. Seventy-five years ago, the cutting of trees for development caused alarmists to predict that before long, there wouldn't be a single tree left standing in the United States.
Schools still try to scare students with visions of rampant deforestation.
The reality, however, is that only 3.3 percent of U.S. forest land has been converted to other uses over the past 30 years. Thirty years ago, the explosion of new telephone lines produced a temporary shortage of the copper used as telephone wire. Alarmists worried that copper would soon exceed the value of gold, and that the growth of telephone lines must be restricted. Then fiber optics became a widespread substitute for copper, and the growing replacement of copper with fiber optic cables has reduced copper once again to a fairly inexpensive bulk commodity. Productivity and efficiency once again increased enormously as a result.