The end of the century proved a poor time to sound the warnings of ecological crisis. That message, called Ecopessimism by the media—despite the fact that people who warn others are optimistic that their listeners can change course—shared the air with the same flock of strange birds that take flight at every century’s close. There were the expected predictions of Jesus’s return and global economic collapse, along with forecasts of terrorist exploits, global computer crashes, and other very bad events of the Book of Revelations sort. But more than end-of-century and -millennium jitters burdened the message of a large environmental crisis ahead.