Impending Armageddon

Once again, we are facing certain doom in the face. There is a global apocalypse just around the corner. According to this anyway.

Now, I have no intention of going in to the ins and outs of the report and what it is telling us about the world we live in. Sure, there seem to be some alarming stats in there, and winter does seem to be warmer these days, but climate change was occurring a long time before greenhouse gases. This planet has had ice ages that have turned into our current climate, and I have yet to be convinced that any changes to the environment are anything other than completely natural climate changes. It may be the climate is changing, and it may also be this is a natural phenomenon that we cannot control.

My point is this - throughout my life, the human race has been on the brink of extinction. Through nuclear war, through flesh eating viruses, through meteors striking the earth (although that could have just been to promote a couple of dodgy Hollywood films), through AIDS, through bird flu and, yes, through the environment. Christ, I'm surprised that no-one has seriously suggested our immediate extinction through rage infested monkeys. Either we are a very lucky race to have avoided all of these calamaties, or people are prone to exaggerating the threats we are facing. It actually gets on my tits, really, because people seem insistent on being negative about the future. I'm a pessimist, but I don't gain any pleasure through shouting from the roof tops "We're all going to die!" I actually think that the human race is resourceful and adaptable, and can probably cope with almost anything that happens to us, short of the planet falling into the sun (and before any wild internet rumours start happening, no, I am not saying the earth is going to fall into the sun...)

There is something about the Stern report that reminds me of the sandwich board man who wanders around with "The End of the World Is Nigh" plastered all over him. And I cannot help but note that we treat the sandwich board man as a joke, something to be smiled at then ignored.