... you all are going to have to excuse me but I am 55 years old and for as
long as I can remember I have been told by numerous pundits that
civilization especially western civilization is about to go bust and
self-destruct. First it was by all-out nuclear war - I also can remember
being told we would run out of crude oil by 2000 - then it was the coming
ice age - and now we all are going to roast in our own juices with global
warming and the runaway greenhouse effect. Sorry if I sound jaded & cynical
but a ton of money has been and will be made predicting the end of the
world.

Personally I think if we snuff ourselves it will come from the small
microbial end of things. Probably with good & benign intentions somebody
will alter the genes of some lifeform and do irrepairable harm to most
probably the food chain and then we all can kiss our modern civilization
goodbye. Just my 2 cents worth.

The fact that we were saved by a hair (remember the Cuban Missile
Crisis) doesn't mean that the wolf wasn't there. But now we have more
wolves, predictable and unpredictable. The issue at hand is the
predictable one. It's not a matter of "if" but of "when." We are
unwilling and uncapable to change and the problem is passed on to
future generations. The other issue is the unpredictable one. As more
people and governments--not always with the best intentions--lay their
hands on WMDs and more conflicts are provoked, something will happen
sooner or later...

There's a dialog in 'The Matrix' in which one of the humanoids says we
human beings are the only living beings, outside of a virus, to
destroy its own home. Maybe we will meet our own medicine.