I'm an "Apocalyptic": I literally believe that these are the "End Times" and that our global civilization is about to tank (in ~10-50 years.)
Why do you think that?
Despite the pessimism in the US and some other parts of the developed world, global civilisation has never been healthier.
It's true that nuclear war is a possible civilisation destroying event (as it has been for ~70 years) but beyond that there are no threats that haven't been there for millennia (eg, large asteroid strikes).
Things like global warming will cause huge destruction in some parts of the world, disrupt and perhaps kill millions of people (eg, Bangladesh isn't in a great way), and probably lead to wars that kill many more.
But even this is far from a global civilisation killer.
I think that total ecosystem collapse and the extinction of wildlife is a possible scenario this century (perhaps even likely, if we continue with business as usual rather than addressing the climate crisis).
Followed by the death of everything that depends on birds and insects, which is probably a large percentage of the remaining wildlife. Similar extinction scenarios are plausible with ocean life.
I guarantee that this would result in the collapse of civilization if it were to occur.
This is one reason it's absolutely vital to halt greenhouse gas emissions. Loss of habitat and pesticides are also huge problems for insects and other wildlife, so dealing with global heating is necessary but perhaps not sufficient to save them, but we have a clear deadline for when we must reach carbon neutrality, so that seems like the top priority.
I think that the decrease in biodiversity is dangerous, but not threatening an extinction event yet - or at least I've never seen a credible scientist who works in that field making that claim.
(I'd also note that both of these things seem to be caused primarily by pesticide usage and other agricultural practices, not climate change)
I once saw the Monarch migration. I can try to describe it but I can't
tell you what it was like. Maybe if I was a poet. Can you feel it if I
say "1/m^3"? I was within them. The whole world was butterflies.
It doesn't happen anymore. We killed them. We took their food. They
weren't hurting anyone. We didn't mean to kill them. We did it by
accident. We weren't paying attention.
Next, let me qualify "global civilization is about to tank..." by adding
"...unless we have some sort of Spiritual transformation of some kind."
I hope that will happen, but this isn't the forum to get into what are
essentially religious beliefs, eh?
Further, I believe that we actually have all the technology we need to
enact a wonderful quasi-utopia. I'm a Bucky Fuller fanboy, and he
basically laid out the math (he was an engineer) to show that, if we
applied our technology efficiently to our problems, we could create a kind
of secular utopia "without disadvantaging anyone". That's even before
you get into things like applied ecology ("Permaculture" et. al.), or
fusion power, etc. We even have the psychological science now to
reprogram our minds. If we chose "be better people" as a goal there is
no time in history more amenable.
Now then, to answer your question,
> Why do you think that?
The simple answer is that I read some books about ecology as a child and
realized that our civilization is predicated on the destruction of life.
We literally destroy living things, everywhere, all the time.
(As an aside, I've never understood how people compartmentalize the world
as "the environment" and folks who care about other [non-human] lives as
"environmentalists", as if the environment is some object or fetish.
Every breath is a bond.)
The only reason we haven't tanked already is due to the truly massive
inertia and resilience of the living world. We are strip-mining the
oceans of biomass and returning plastic. Our agriculture "mines" the
soil and causes erosion.[0] Together with our meat animals we outweigh
all other terrestrial animals by an order of magnitude.[1] I could go
on, at great length.
Since my childhood, I've seen that the ecological destruction has only
gotten worse. And, while some people have started to change their
attitudes towards Nature, the bulk of humanity seems to be just as
self-centered and destructive as ever. And now they are distracted by
their phones.
Also, we are absurdly not-quite-smart. E.g. refrigerators that open like
cabinets instead of drawers. Every time you open a fridge, the cold air
spills out and is replaced by some warm air, and the fridge then has to
cool that air off when you close the door. I can't begin to imagine the
energy we could conserve just by changing that one stupid detail.
Everything is like that. I could go on, at great length.
You mention nukes...
> The most recent officially announced setting— 2 minutes to midnight —was
made in January 2018, which was left unchanged in 2019 due to the twin
threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, and the problem of those
threats being "exacerbated this past year by the increased use of
information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying
risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization
in extraordinary danger.”
> Earth's LAND MAMMALS By Weight [[A graph in which
one square equals 1,000,000 tons. Dark grey squares represent humans,
light gray represent our pets and livestock, and green squares represent
wild animals. The squares are arranged in a roughly round shape, with
clusters for each type of animal. Animals represented: Humans, cattle,
pigs, goats (39 squares), sheep, horses (29 squares), elephants (1
square). There are other small, unlabeled clusters also. It is clear that
humans and our pets & livestock outweigh wild animals by at least a
factor of 10. ]] {{Title text: Bacteria still outweigh us thousands to
one--and that's not even counting the several pounds of them in your
body.}}
Why do you think that?
Despite the pessimism in the US and some other parts of the developed world, global civilisation has never been healthier.
It's true that nuclear war is a possible civilisation destroying event (as it has been for ~70 years) but beyond that there are no threats that haven't been there for millennia (eg, large asteroid strikes).
Things like global warming will cause huge destruction in some parts of the world, disrupt and perhaps kill millions of people (eg, Bangladesh isn't in a great way), and probably lead to wars that kill many more.
But even this is far from a global civilisation killer.