Perspectives
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Climate Apocalypse is Here: Science Fiction has become our New Reality
Michael T. Klare
October 9, 2015
Not so long ago, it was science fiction. Now, it’s hard science--and that should frighten us all. The latest reports from the prestigious and sober Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) make increasingly hair-raising reading, suggesting that the planet is approaching possible moments of irreversible damage in a fashion and at a speed that had not been anticipated.
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The Great Arctic Thaw Could Unleash Giant Viruses
Emily J. Gertz
September 11, 2015
It’s a scenario straight out of The X-Files: A prehistoric pathogen, isolated for millennia in Arctic ice, comes to light in the modern world.
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A Child Born Today May Live to See Humanity’s End, Unless…
David Auerback
June 18, 2015
Humans will be extinct in 100 years because the planet will be uninhabitable, according to Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner, one of the leaders of the effort to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. He blames overcrowding, denuded resources and climate change.
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The Age of American Exceptionalism is Over
Tom Engelhardt
July 3, 2015
The rise and fall of great powers and their imperial domains has been a central fact of history for centuries. It’s been a sensible, repeatedly validated framework for thinking about the fate of the planet. So it’s hardly surprising, when faced with a country once regularly labeled the “sole superpower,” “the last superpower,” or even the global “hyperpower” and now, curiously, called nothing whatsoever, that the “decline” question should come up. Is the U.S. or isn’t it? Might it or might it not now be on the downhill side of imperial greatness?
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Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome
Nicholas Wade
March 19, 2015
A group of leading biologists on Thursday called for a worldwide moratorium on use of a new genome-editing technique that would alter human DNA in a way that can be inherited.
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Humanity Keeps Discovering Brilliant New Ways to Destroy Itself
Leo Mirani
January 15, 2015
Of humanity’s many notable achievements since the end of World War II, perhaps the greatest is simply that we haven’t yet destroyed ourselves.