For whatever reason, it is never the big problems that really get to me. I'm less worried about the several world wars that seem impending on the global stage, the decline in the education of the west, the creeping fundamentalism and radicalism (both nationalist and religious) all over the world, or the increasing rates of violence and and mental illness in the west.
The problems that always seem to attract my attention the most are the unexpected ones, the global problems that seem to sneak in from the flank. Take for instance the bee situation.
We were just going along minding our own business - then, seemingly out of nowhere, we have a bee crisis on our hands! Suddenly (things always seem sudden when presented in the news) the bee population is dwindling dangerously, and David Byrne is quoting Einstein as saying that 4 years after bees go extinct, humanity is doomed. An apocalypse on the horizon, out of left field: Here we were concentrating on pacifying rogue states and cutting our carbon emissions, when it turns out the real doomsday was going to come from the disappearance of beehives!
Since then, we have discovered that the culprit behind the hive scarcity was a virus. So we can stop worrying about that now . . . maybe we haven't solved the problem, but we found a cause - you can sleep easy.
I have also always been fascinated by the apparent effect that cow flatulence is said to have upon global warming. I mean, it sounds like the punchline to a joke, but yet its a very real threat. And now we can add to this . . .. get ready for it - Mammoth Dung! Yes, it's the very latest thing in paranoia - if you're the sort of person who likes to get worried, you can forget about your cancer causing vitamin d deficiency that you got from wearing sunblock, or the hazardous chemicals leaching out of the water bottle that you bought in order to facilitate your heart-disease fighting exercise - the latest fad in fear is the apparently catastrophic effect that melting prehistoric poo is going to have on our climate! Talk about an unexpected (and hilarious) apocalypse. . ..
Here's the link: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1076886120070917?sp=true
picture of mammoth remains by Linksmanjd
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