I'm usually the last person to subscribe to conspiracy theories, BUT...
There does seem to have been a significant amount of intentional "social engineering" going on over the last few decades.
As for intentional social engineering, remember Al Gore wrote "Earth in the Balance", signed the Kyoto treaty and was in office for 8 years. Eight years is time enough to do a _lot_ of harm. Here is the net effect of our energy policies based on global warming on a treaty which was never ratified but which has been implement bit by bit by the department of energy, the EPA and other federal agencies:
...under the [Kyoto] treaty, while emerging economies are exempted, global warming hysteria will [has]:
1.Increase the cost of living, forcing U.S. consumers to pay more for electricity (40-50 percent in some parts of the country) and other consumer goods, since electricity costs are reflected in the production costs of almost all goods and services;
2.Reduce American wages each year by 5 percent to 10 percent;
3.Devastate strategic U.S. industries, such as the steel, aluminum, chemical, pulp and paper, coal and cement industries, which also includes many large employers;
4.Encourage energy-intensive U.S. industries to move out of the U.S. to exempted countries like Mexico and Indonesia -- to any country beyond the reach of America's environmental police -- causing the additional loss of tens of thousands of high-skilled, high-wage jobs.
http://www.annapolisinstitute.net/archives/commentary/pb1997331.html