Now that it feels so much closer, what do you have in the end-of-the-world pool: virus, climate catastrophe, fascism-sparked political conflagration or other?
“Other” might include any of the various Hollywood projections of note – wayward meteor, killer comet, blast-us-to-bits asteroid, aliens and/or a pathogen that turns certain of us into deadly monsters.
That last one’s looking pretty strong right now.
Anyway, some people have begun trying to handicap the top contenders to be the planet’s official cause of death, including my friend and former Post-Gazette sportswriter Chico Harlan, now the Rome bureau chief for The Washington Post.
Retweeting the Post’s story on the possibility that global warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, Chico said that the planet’s destabilizing climate “makes all other worries pale in comparison.”