You right. 50 years or so. I was trying going back far enough to include the discovery of man-made climate change and not necessarily starting right at the plugging our ears portion of the timeline.
replyRegarding the nuclear FUD, I'm not backing down. We'll never know how much the fear of nuclear was grassroots and how much was turf, but we can know for sure that someone didn't want Americans to have energy independence.
Fear of nuclear weapons was backed in as part of the Cold War Mutually Assured Destruction stand off doctrine - rather hard to achieve when pushing the Atoms For Peace warm fuzzy alternative.
replyDidn't help that nukes didn't make good civil engineering tools or help conquer space by farting out tiny bombs.
Even Carl Sagan was pushing the nuclear should not be used primal back brain reaction by over hyping (?) nuclear winter for a disarmament argument.