As I wrote to Madelyn Cain (see "One or None?", The Crowded Planet, May/June 2000):
I do agree with you that "the world may end in a nanosecond for no discernible reason". This is frighteningly possible, as Jonathan Schell forcibly reminds us in his book The Fate of the Earth. Nuclear war is a real danger. Despite the end of the cold war and rumors to the contrary, it is getting more real all the time.
As horrible as that is to contemplate, however, it pales in comparison to what Harry Petrequin calls "the four horsemen of the Apocalypse": global warming, species extinction, deforestation, and overpopulation. (Petrequin is a retired Foreign Service officer who lives in Black Mountain and often writes for the Asheville Citizen-Times, a local paper.) Any one of these 'horsemen' could easily do us in, and the combination of all four is much worse. Not only are their effects cumulative, but they are mutually reinforcing. Together they impel each other on ever faster, in a forward feedback spiral with no brakes. And this analysis doesn't even include such relatively minor—but well publicized—problems as air and water pollution, the hole in the ozone layer, and genetically modified organisms. Needless to say, there are many others that get no publicity at all.
I don't think anyone can really appreciate the magnitude and seriousness
of these threats without doing a considerable amount of reading on the
subject. Here is a list from my web site that I compiled for the purpose;
you can find it on the book list of my home page. I'm sure there are others
that would work equally well (and I'd like to know about them!).
