Is Climate Change an Existential Threat?
If a 60-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) asteroid slammed into Earth tomorrow, it would render the planet inhospitable to nearly all life forms, save for the hardiest extremophiles. This mass extinction event would wipe humanity off the face of the Earth—there would be no survivors. To some experts, this is the true definition of an “existential threat.” Traditionalists will say this term describes a risk that endangers the very existence of something—in this case, the human species. In recent ye