Because the government never wants to look bad.

Statistics are often manipulated to make things look better or worse than they actually are. The Federal government is especially good at this.

Sometimes it is also just complicated as hell to ascribe a number to something.

There is almost always more to the story than any 1 number that describes something like "Inflation".

I gotta agree with Ben Franklin on this: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Many rare earth elements are available all over the world in easily mined concentrations. In the US, it is virtually impossible to mine rare earth minerals due to environmental regulation, some reasonable, some not. Rare earth minerals can be mined safely but the US just won't allow it.

They could but they won't. These predictions are always so much more rosy than reality. I'd say that it's going to be more like 25 years at least, more likely 50.

It's pretty obvious that government agencies are being pushed to make things "green". This is the result, it looks green at a glance so it's a win, right? Much like the ethanol in gas, it sounds great but it doesn't do anything to combat CO2 emissions and may actually make them worse.

There has always been someone predicting the end of the world since there have been people. For example:

The Cold War- ~1947-1991. The major concern was nuclear war followed by nuclear winter. Virtually everyone was predicted to die. As an elementary student in the 1960s we had regular "Duck and Cover" drills. Hell, I grew up in the '60s and '70s in upstate NY, 20 miles from a major US Air Force SAC base, a major target. We didn't really focus on this all that much, we weren't all cowering in fear, we just lived life. Looking back, that should have been some seriously scary shit!

In the 1970s there were all sorts of predictions, pollution will krill us all, an Ice Age was coming, etc.

Y2K was supposed to be a major problem in 2000. Planes would crash, Wall Street would crash, power would go out, nuclear reactors would melt down, etc. What a major fizzle that turned out to be!

The current "Climate Change" scare started out as "Global Warming", the name got changed when the global warming wasn't happening as fast as it was predicted. Guess what? Climate changes!! Take a look at Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", the documentary that essentially started the whole Global Warming craze, The predictions were much less than accurate.

I could write pages about failed doomsday predictions but there's really no point, there will always be someone predicting the end of the world. Always!!!

Economy? There have been great times and there have been bad times. It is extremely doubtful that you'll see a total collapse. There could be a market crash, it's happened before but at your age, it'll have little effect. Me, at 61 years old would be pissed since I'd lose a lot of my retirement money in my 401K but it still wouldn't be the end of the world for me.

AI? AI has a long way to go before it will ever go mainstream, if ever. Yeah, the current versions can do some amazing things but most of them are very specialized and cannot do the things humans can do as well as humans do. Yep, they will take some jobs from us, you don't really need a human doing repetitive job on some assembly line. Humans are still king and always will be at creative endeavors.

You could go the Prepper route if you're unable to let go of your fears but it could get expensive.

There's always going to be something to worry about in the future if you focus on it. Life your life in the here and now, don't live your life in fear. Plan for the future for sure but plan for a normal life.

Autonomous highway driving is a very different animal than autonomous driving in a city. The highway driving is relatively easy when compared to city driving. There's a bunch of other driving situations that have very different levels of complexity.

I just think about how many accidents that I have avoided in the past. There have been times when I just knew that someone at the stop sign was going to blow thru it, I couldn't tell you how I knew but I did. I have seen other instances where I just knew someone was going to do something total boneheaded, again, there were no obvious clues but my brain picked up on them. As humans we process a ton of data in real time, when there isn't enough data, our brains fill in the blanks. We have intuition, I have no clue how you would make any machine have intuition. I just don't know how you could ever program for those kinds of things.

In the end, I don't think that we will ever have a fully autonomous driving system that works in all situations. Yeah, I know, humans do make a lot of mistakes and maybe autonomous cars will make fewer mistakes, I don't know.

A bigger concern is how my autonomous car would make decisions. What are the priorities? Is the life of the passengers top priority? Will my car sacrifice me to save other persons or people? The questions can get into some pretty philosophical/moral areas.

What scares me is that there are so many people who agree with this idiot.

I get it, Rob Bonta is much more intelligent than most people, he knows what is true and what isn't. If only everyone else could be forced to see things his way, the world would be better, right?

What is the truth? We know the "fact checkers" are virtually worthless. Who determines the truth?