Chicken Little Alert! ABCNEWS asks: 'Are we living in the last century of our civilization?'

[Ubiquitous]

Scientists From Around the Globe Join ABC News in a Forum on Surviving the
Century
Join the Debate: We Want Your Thoughts, Videos on the Earth's Future
By SARAH NAMIAS
June 12, 2008—

Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all
of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could
our society actually be heading towards collapse?

According to many of the world's top scientists, the answer is yes, unless we
take action now.

This September, in Earth 2100, a dramatic ABC News 2-hour broadcast, the
greatest minds across the globe will join together in a countdown to the year
2100 to tell us what we must do to survive the next century & And what may
happen if we don't.

The time to act is now, says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute.

"The 21st century is going to be the century which determine[s] whether we
live or die as a sustainable species," Gleick said. "As populations grow, as
our use of resources grows, I think we get closer and closer to that edge."

Experts say that extreme changes in climate, combined with dwindling
resources, famine, war and disease have the potential to create a
post-apocalyptic world in less than a hundred years. Harvard University and
Woods Hole climatologist John Holdrens says we cannot continue going down the
same path.

"If we continue on business as usual, we are going to see more floods, more
droughts, more heat waves, more wildfires, more ice melting, faster sea level
rise," Holdren said.

"We really have less than a decade to start getting this right. If we're still
dragging our feet in 2015 I think it really becomes at that point almost
impossible for the world to avert a degree of climate change that we simply
will not be able to manage without intolerable cost and consequences."

In order to avoid this chilling future, we have to first imagine it. In an
unprecedented Internet event, ABC is inviting people from around the world to
bring the future to life.

We are asking you to use your imagination to create short videos about what it
would be like to live through the next century if we stay on our current path.
Using predictions from top experts, we will brief participants on global
conditions in the years 2015, 2050, 2070 and 2100 -- and we want you to
describe the dangers that are unfolding before your eyes.

Submitted videos will be combined with the projections of top scientists,
historians, and economists to form a powerful Web-based narrative about the
perils of our future. We will also select the most compelling reports to form
the backbone of our two-hour primetime ABC News broadcast: Earth 2100, airing
this fall.

--
"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem.
Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an
overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a
predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and
how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."
-- Al Gore acknowledges exaggerating the dangers of "global warming"

[timeOday]

I don't see how climate change could actually destroy civilization as we
know it. However, I think the costs of climate change could very easily
exceed the costs of averting it. Thus we should do something.

I'd say nuclear weapons are by far the biggest danger of wiping out
civilization in the next century. Imagine if both sides had them in
quantity during WWII. We probably wouldn't have made it.