How Our Response to Y2K Reveals What We'll Do About Global Warming and Swine Flu

The United States came together and responded to the Y2K threat surprisingly well. Why isn't that happening in response to global warming?

How did the people on Y2K's front lines overcome these hurdles? They focused on the worst. "We're accelerating toward disaster," de Jager wrote in 1993. In his 1996 letter to Clinton, Moynihan frets about the Social Security Administration and the IRS' continued ability to function, worries that banks would need to spend billions to address the problem, and suggests that the nation's economy may spiral out of control if the problem isn't fixed by 1999. If the proponents of fixing the problem acknowledged the naysayers, it was usually only to swat them down with variations on an adage that was hard to rebut: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Find out what Y2K has to do with swine flu here.