Happy New Year – The End is – Not – Near

Another seasons greeting  from Einar Du Rietz

Dear fellow environmentalists,

holidays are supposed to offer a moment of reflexion, so please be my guest to this favourite (most likely your favourite too, at least if you are a Brussels ex-pat) New Years song. This year, it celebrates it’s 30th anniversary, being written and performed in 1979. That year was one of the heydays of the alarmist movement. Rahel Carson had already predicted that all birds would stop singing. Predictions, taken seriously by a scaring majority, said that oil was out, and that in only a few years, all natural resources would be gone. Doomsday, big time.

ABBA contemplates in the song over what will await us all, “at the end of 1989″.

Now we know the answer to that one. 1989 became, to much surprise one of the most important, and certainly the happiest year during the 20th century, as what we perceived as solid dictatorships crumbled and fell. Twenty years later, all might not be perfect in these countries, but life – including environmental aspects – has improved dramatically. And there is more oil than ever, technological development has made life both easier and more energy efficient, the polar beers keep multiplying and it’s been a white christmas in most of Europe.

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