Asimov on Global Warming

The first thing about the above video that’s amazing to me is that Isaac Asimov is talking about global warming as a threat to humanity back in 1989. Keep in mind that this was before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. At that point in time the main concern with most folks was nuclear war, for example Carl Sagan talked about this in his epic TV series Cosmos.

What’s also interesting to me is that having heard Asimov speak at a science fiction convention or two, he was very pro-technology in his mindset — for him it was all about progress. So for example he was very much in favor of nuclear power, so hearing him come out against global warming shows me a different side of his thinking. Although from his point of view it’s a problem with old technology and a hundred years of smoke stacks. The second part of the video is here: