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THE FUTURE IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

In the mid-1970s, just about forty years ago, an environmental activist by the name of Sam Love toured the United States with a multimedia lecture entitled Visions of Tomorrow. The image in the banner above comes from one of his fliers. The point of Love's presentation was that the way we imagine the future is susceptible to change. In the 1950s, we saw the future much like the cover of a science fiction magazine. The vision was of flying cars, food in a tablet, household robots, domed cities, and floating skyscrapers, something like what Hanna-Barbera portrayed in the cartoon show The Jetsons. Then in the 1960s and 70s, as the age of environmentalism was dawning, that image of the future gradually suffered through some serious reality checks. With the increased awareness for toxic wastes and air quality, with the first alarms for population growth and global warming, the bright vision of the future was compromised by concerns for energy woes, food shortages, and shrinking natural resources. Two new futures loomed: one of environmental degradation and economic recession and one of low-tech energy creation and conservation, windmills, photovoltaic cells, passive heating and cooling, increased bicycle use, neighborhood organic gardens, and recycling everything.

THE GREEN WHITE HOUSE

White House
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