Guest,999 is right, it doesn't have to be this way. But when too many people believe the end is near it can become self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember when Reagan named James Watt as Secretary of the Interior. Watt too believed that the Judgment Day was nigh, and in his tenure as the man responsible for conserving our resources he protected less species and opened more public land up to mining, ranching and oil drilling than anyone who had ever held that position. Watt, an avowed Christian, was later indicted on corruption charges and plead out. In a 2001 interview, Watt applauded the Bush administration energy strategy and said its prioritization of oil drilling and coal mining above conservation is just what he recommended in the early 1980s. "Everything Cheney's saying, everything the president's saying - they're saying exactly what we were saying 20 years ago, precisely ... Twenty years later, it sounds like they've just dusted off the old work." An earlier Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt must have been rolling in his grave. People who have a belief system that convinces them that we are living in the end times (and those that do think it's a good thing BTW) should not be involved in any kind of decision making on public policy. If you believe that the last generation of mankind is already here, why would you feel the need to be in government anyway, unless you think God needs a hand in that whole doomsday thing. Let the rest of us deluded fools who still have hope try to pull us back from the precipice, even if you think our efforts are destined to fail.