Generation Green

Faraday Cage

1979: The Three Mile Island Reactor goes into a complete meltdown.
1986: The Chernobyl catastrophe.
1989: The Exxon Valdez oil spill.
1991: Successful hard-line coup in the Soviet Union.
1992: Backed by the much expanded Green Party in coalition with United We Stand America and the massive anti-nuclear activism community, independent candidate Ross Perot is elected POTUS.

Forgive the slow butterflies at first.
 

Faraday Cage

The 90's: During Perot's two terms in office riding the post-Three Mile generation wave the United States and it's European allies become increasingly anti-nuclear, alternatively powered, and isolationist. Meanwhile the Soviet Union cracks down on uprisings in the outer Republics and recommits to the Middle East, growing more and more miserably impoverished.

The 00's: Democrats in the White House for 8 years, the USSR collapses and Russia balkanizes in a bloody civil war with several nuclear detonations that further push global disarmament into the mainstream even after the wave that carried Perot has passed it's high point, the rise of India and China (with Brazil as the less partner to both of them). Pro "disarmament through diplomacy and force, if necessary" Republican elected in 2008, replacing 16 years of isolationism with a new try at interventionism.
 
Socialism my man.

How do you like me now?

Adequately. :D

(Althoguth quite how socialism is relevant in a socio-economic hemisphere where 50%+ regard themsevlves as middle class, and the dialectical materialism of historical "progress" has been resolutely rebutted, well ... that's your poblem, presumably ...)
 

Faraday Cage

On the downside there are a bunch of nuclear-armed squabbling ex-Soviet states.

On the upside alternative energy got big in the US and Europe in the 80's so peak oil should be less of a problem.
 

Faraday Cage

So in 2008 there would be a new hardline government committing vast resources to military adventures while the nation is in economic peril...which is exactly what implodes the USSR into a bunch of nuclear-armed rogue states in this timeline.

Neat.

From environmentalism to Perot to balkanized US in three easy steps! :D

So starting in 2008 with an already economically downshifted US, 8 years of interventionist wars and haphazard return to free market policies breaks the bank and the reform Democrat who is elected next sees the nation collapse within his first two years of office (2017-2018). The government ceases to be able to functionally do anything, goes on a long-emergency footing, while the functions of day to day society are reduced to the regional level: here the protectionism and alternative energy will have paid off as cities and counties will have wind-farms, hydro-plants, local manufacturing, etc.

With massive investments by India, China, Brazil, and Japan the United States eventually gets back on it's feet a decade later but with it's nuclear arsenal having been mostly disarmed and it's last use of it's neglected overseas force projection capabilities having broken said capabilities it'll never be the single top superpower ever again.
 
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lol stupid Green.

Get a proper politcal belief.

Though I haven't got anything to contribute that hasn't already be said, this has interested me.

Also grow up mate seriously. It's people like you who allow things like global warming, mocking the people who care.
 

Faraday Cage

Anyway, I think that in general the effects on the Eighties generation of a full on Three Mile Island would be vast, especially if more environmental disasters occurred during their formative years and the USSR's gigantic nuclear stockpiles were still around in their adult days; which pretty much sums up my short scenario here.

Of course the practical plausibility of Generation X/Green actually usurping power from the Baby Boomers is debatable, but just going by a high historical inertia mentality the idea of environmentalists/anti-nuclear-activists lending Perot their support because he'd listen to them when the big candidates wouldn't appeals to me in a raw "What If?" kind of way.

Of course to assume Perot would be willing to go along with such may be stretching plausibility too, no matter how much he wanted to be president or not.
 
Though I haven't got anything to contribute that hasn't already be said, this has interested me.

Also grow up mate seriously. It's people like you who allow things like global warming, mocking the people who care.

What Global Warming? There is no Global Warming. There has been no Global Warming for 10 years and more now as global tempratures peaked in 1998 and have gone straight down since 2005! All that happened in the 1990s is that the sun cycle was in its more active period which raises global tempratures but now it is getting less active and the tempratures gone straitght down with them. CO2 is a trace gas that has a rather limited effect on weather. The big driver is solar lumanosity and after that water. The evidence shows that temprature drives CO2 emmisions not the other way around. Don't let yourself get conned by the Greens.
 
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