Once a while I have time to read the Modern Mechanix blog. Many of the articles posted, from old magazines, discussed devices or predictions that never came about. Mixed up with those are some that are prophetic. Maybe there are some lessons for us as well.

This article, from an issue of Popular Mechanics published in 1953, discusses both greenhouse gasses and global warming! If only we had paid attention back then.

A prototype wind power  generator was in use in Russia for a year when this article was published in 1934.

There's also an article the same year on harnessing solar power, again in the Soviet Union.

A 1934 article proposes building power generators 'way off in the sea and sending the power back via transmission cables.

This 1931 article describes a system of magnetic levitation for a high-speed rapid transit system.

Or if that seems too far-fetched, here's a 1946 article describing a monorail system:

 IMAGINE boarding a sleek, gleaming car and speeding to your office or home at 200 miles an hour-noiselessly and without a jar! Imagine living out in the wide open spaces where you've always wanted to live, away from the crowds and smoke and noise of cities-even a hundred miles distant from your work, yet only a half-hour commuting-time away.

Interestingly, the picture shows the German monorail traveling over water. That's also what they did with the Tokyo/Haneda airport monorail.

Building it along the edge of Tokyo Bay kept the noisy, ugly thing away from anyone it could annoy.

I am sure there are many interesting predictions/solutions in the past that could help with todays questions of green mass transit or global warming solutions etc. What can you dig up?