That was just one piece of it.
The post-nuclear wasteland was one common image of the World To Come, but the culture was full of smelly dystopian images of the future.
The space program was pretty much on the ropes until the Shuttle. There was some noise from the Nixon administration about Mars, but nobody was kidding anyone.
Paul Ehrlich was the prophet of the future. We were all doomed.
We're not as optimistic as our post-WWII forefathers, but we're better than we could be.