Is the sky really falling?
We’ve imagined threats like peak oil and a national debt crunch before.

Chicken-Little_Sky-is-Falling

Senator Joe McCarthy helped us see Communist treason among our friends. The Science and Math Gap with the Soviet Union alarmed us. The Missile Gap seemed even more threatening. A generation of school children sat in basement corridors contemplating nuclear annihilation. Cuban revolutionaries, Dominos in Southeast Asia, WMD’s in the Middle East – all were billed as existential threats.

But each was a non-threat in the end (or from the outset). So why should today’s threats seem more plausible? Shouldn’t we see exaggerations, faulty logic, self-serving bias? For every discouraging view I hear, I can find a don’t-worry-be-happy response. Doesn’t history suggest that most threats on the horizon will prove ephemeral?

Boy, I certainly hope so.

But I’m not ready to let hope replace thought, or confidence discourage preparation.  The stakes for my family are too high.