The Real Threat

Our Doom Is Sure

Catastrophism is a peculiar state of mind which sees the end of life as we know it drawing near.  Whilst the phobia is certain that the end is coming, the precise form of the threat can change.

In the 1970's Paul Ehrlich was warning us that overpopulation was going to destroy the planet.  The decade before that, Rachel Carson was solemnly declaring in Silent Spring that DDT was going to poison us all.  Nevil Shute was sketching out nuclear Armageddon in his dystopian novel, On the Beach. And then, in the eighties, there was the threat looming of a new Ice Age which would devastate the planet and see us all off to frozen graves.  But by the end of the next decade in the nineties the end of life as we knew it would come about through global warming.  The planet was going to cook to death.  And, of course, there was the multi-decadal threat from space asteroids hitting earth.

Now a new catastrophic threat is emerging.