The year 2000 AD/CE is not the first millennium the world has ever experienced. The year 1000 AD/CE lies behind us in history, the earth has survived it as well as its inhabitants barring wars, floods, and famines.

At that time, there was a great surge of religious fervor resulting in the First Crusade 95 years into the year 1000. The crusade became an opportunity for European expansion into the Mediterranean area which had been closed to them for centuries. The shipping industry grew transporting crusaders and bringing rare commodities to those who could afford them in Western Europe.

The period was not without its hazards. Death by battle in the Crusades reduced manpower. Viking and Mongol invasions, petty wars among the nobility took their toll as well as famine and sickness.

Doesn't all this sound familiar as we approach another millennium? War are still with us, Bosnia, Servia, parts of Africa, wars that never seem to cease just as one Crusade led into another until there were nine of them. To what end?

The plagues of the 13th and 14th Centuries are no more but we make our own plagues, spewing pollution into the air, contaminating rivers and streams with industrial chemicals dumped into the water and warming up the atmosphere with emissions of all kids to the point where glaciers are melting into the seas. Weather patterns have changed - drought in some areas of the world, massive floods, tornadoes and tidal waves in others. Are we doomed?

No - not if we heed the timely words attributed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." So be it.