Of those, though, two of the threats were real and mitigated before the impact could be realized (nuclear war and Y2K), and one of them is a fairly recent scientific theory that is still trying to be understood (climate change).

In the 80s we acted faster on freon/CFCs than we have on climate change in the ensuing 30 years, with less danger to human life and less evidence. The only thing that's new about climate change as a scientific theory is the annual increase in the pile of evidence that it's happening and we're the cause of it.

Absolutely horrible example because .com owns .gov and the primary patent for CFC production expired in 1979, obviously lots of money is going to be poured into encouraging the use of patented CFC replacements, such as making the use of CFCs illegal. I'm not questioning the science of it, I'm explaining why .com and .gov worked together really hard on banning CFCs in the early/mid 80s, because HCFCs and HFCs are more profitable. The historical about-face is documented and hilarious how .com strongly denied CFCs could have any effect therefore .gov wouldn't ban them until the patent expired, then suddenly everyone agrees we need to use the more expensive HFCs and HCFCs.

I'm quite sure around the time HFC and HCFC patents expire we'll all have to suffer thru very well industry funded explanations of how R-141b causes excessive pr0n browsing or some such nonsense, so for the children, we'll all have to switch a new, ever more expensive refrigerant.

I'm sure if the patent for CFC production expired in 2020 we'd still be pumping the classic stuff out, along with an industry funded denial movement and probably an alignment on political party lines to prevent any progress, etc.

Bringing it back on the original topic the best way to get .com (and since the merger, .gov) to fund antibiotic research in the modern real world would be to genetically engineer bacteria genome to contain an encoded .avi of the SuperBowl or an encoded Miley Cyrus .mp3 or something like that. Maybe glycophosphate resistant MRSA would get some attention from the usual suspects.

If someone could figure out how to patent global warming or global cooling we'd be on to something...

This is nonsense. Some large portion of industry would be happy enough to not pay royalties.

There are also at least several countries with little regard for patents and significant industrial bases that none the less signed on to treaties to limit and cease the production of CFCs...

But sure, Dupont made the US government strong arm India and China into paying for their new refrigerants. And Russia too.

Freon and CFC's were easier to replace.

Exactly. Those are two specific things that needed to be eliminated. Climate change deals with a lot of bad actors, and a very broad category of changes.

Well, none of those (if you replace Y2K with Y2038!) are down for the count yet.

Tne real threat of a Dr. Strangelovian nuclear apocalypse certainly died with the Soviet Union, which isn't to say that such conditions could never arise again. And of course the risk of a smaller scale nuclear war is still very real.

In each of these cases there seems to be a tendency to think that just because total disaster has not yet occurred, that the risks are nonexistent.

"Tne real threat of a Dr. Strangelovian nuclear apocalypse certainly died with the Soviet Union"

Why? Did the weapons magically disappear? That outcome is much more likely in the 2010s than the 1980s, for example.