The Big Answer

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We're all about to go over a cliff together—will we act like dumb lemmings or prove that we actually deserve the title 'intelligent life'?

"For about three billion years, life has existed on the planet. Humans have been here only two million years. And civilization only a few thousand years. In the past 200 years, and primarily in the last fifty . . . , humanity has come to threaten most of life on Earth [written in 1988]. A nuclear exchange would likely exterminate all life. The havoc we play against the environment may be provoking major system shifts that will also cause extinction." (Source: The Gaia Peace Atlas, Survival into the Third Millennium)

In the past 200 years, and primarily in the last fifty, humanity has come to threaten most of life on Earth

Either way, we lose. And whether we lose out of fear, hate, ignorance, greed, or self-righteousness, it doesn't matter, it will be over for humanity and for all living organisms on Earth (except possibly for a few incredibly tough ones like cockroaches).

Cockroaches may be the only organism to survive our influence, in the long run

Cockroach relaxing, chuckling to itself about how dumb humans had been to wreck the Earth like they did

We have the intelligence to correct our errors, to turn those things around that we are fast becoming victims of. But can we muster up enough cooperation, caring, and respect for life to do so? Or will we continue to be driven by greed, power, money, and selfishness and continue to be so shortsighted that we will have soon mortgaged our children's futures far beyond our (or their) ability to repair the damage?

national debt

The doomsday clock is currently set at 3 minutes to midnight

Unless American citizens start defecating money, the debt has put us all in deep doo-doo

The doomsday clock keeps ticking. Our most eminent scholars predict that the issue is not IF doomsday will come; the question is simply WHEN. The doomsday clock is currently set at 3 minutes to midnight. We have the power to choose the kind of future we want. But choosing means taking responsibility for our choices, not hoping that others will do the job. This means that millions of people must soon engage in close encounters of the third kind (see the novel The Forest Through The Trees).

As the world community becomes more and more an interdependent, information- and communications-centered global village, all citizens of the planet are affected by events in every part of the world. Air pollution, for example, does not respect national boundaries. It affects the atmosphere of the entire Earth. War and terrorism affect everyone as well. With the accessibility of weapons, including nuclear types, no one on Earth is immune to the actions of terrorists and megalomaniac leaders. Hunger and starvation affect us all, whether we're affected by the devastation inflicted on the environment by the desperate hungry, or by their civil unrest or terrorist acts. Fuel burning is producing global warming that threatens massive climactic disruption. Ask Al Gore about global warming—he's an expert.

There have been 127 wars in the 20th and 21st centuries and 160 million people have died in war. The Bushs and Obama are making sure the situation accelerates, creating wars just to feel macho (and pour money into oligarch wallets).

Have we poisoned the Earth beyond our (or our kids') ability to clean up?

In Good News and Bad News, we have carefully outlined what is going wrong in the world, the main sources of the problems, what can work to bring the world back from the brink (yes, the world is poised on the edge of a dangerous cliff, and it will go over this cliff soon if nothing changes). It's the ultimate world survival plan.