While I don't put much faith in predictions of The End, or any specific dates on which it is meant to happen, the scientist in me sees a serious end-game we are playing with the world we inhabit.

Between overpopulation leading to disease and putting millions of people in cities that are impossible to evacuate in the event of a sudden catastrophic weather or geological event, a disturbing and dangerous snowballing of our reliance on genetically-engineered food crops cultivated on large scale using fossil fuels, declines in pollinator populations worldwide, ability of air travel to quickly spread outbreaks of disease worldwide, increased severity of weather events, and growing gaps between the comfortably wealthy and the desperately poor, it would take less now than at times in past history to cause the human population of this planet to complete our self-destruct cycle.

The basic job of any species is to ensure its own continued survival. We are failing miserably. At least we have our MTV...