Waiting For The end of the World

HUMAN BEINGS, you have perhaps noticed, have a penchant, predicated doubtless upon awareness and fear of inevitable personal death, to proclaim, and in most cases to sincerely believe in, the imminent end of the world. In ancient times, people were just absolutely certain that some angry god or other would, at any moment, bathe the world in flame or water, killing everyone, or maybe just some enemy. Apocalyptic prophecy was taken to a new height by, yes, Jesus himself, who repeated one message more than any other: the Lord is coming soon, and the end of the world as you know it is close at hand. he was wrong, of course. All prophets of doom are wrong, thankfully. At the approach of the year one thousand, all of Europe plunged into an end of the world despondency on steroids. Fortunately for non Europeans, who used different calendars, there was no such concern. Among the more famous end of world crazes was the Millerite phenomenon of 1843, and again in 1844. Devout Christian William Miller announced that through intense study of the Bible, he had calculated and definitively determined that the Lord would return on a forthcoming October something or other eighteen 1843. Folks all over America sold out, packed up, and stood atop mountains, certain of soon being raptured into heaven. When nothing happened, Miller quickly explained that there had been a slight error in his calculations, and the actual coming of the lord end of the world would, beyond doubt, be in October of 1844. Miller himself barely survived the end of the world; his celebrity did not. Another human proclivity is our tendency to consider ourselves personally virtuous. We all think we are among the virtuous. Everyone of a certain age will fondly recall the near panic which gripped us all as the late nineties lurched towards the year 200, and the "Y2K" phenomenon, in which folks were digging underground bunkers, and storing water, food, and ammo. Nothing happened, predictably, the world wide computer failure so widely predicted failed to manifest without a gliche. In childhood, doom sayers intrigued me; in adulthood, I have tended to roll my eyes at them. it is therefore ironic that I am now among the doom sayers. the agent of world death" climate change. there are two differences between climate change doom sayers and the others: the threat is real, and there something we can do about it, because the cause of the problem is ourselves.