My name: According to you, what's the biggest issue in the world right now? Why?

ColorStorm: The environment, because we're killing life forms and species en masse, and our mode of living is utterly unsustainable. A few more years of this and the world is going to be a pretty shitty place.. and not to mention that billions of people are going to starve (not that people are the only important species on the planet, contrary to how some people seem to think).

I'm surprised that some people actually think this is just business as usual and that environmental concerns are over-hyped. I'm not really sure how a person can pay even the slightest bit of attention to what's happening globally and still hold that view.

Species are dying off at a faster rate than any other mass extinction event in history, in just a few decades we've depleted 90% of the world's forests, the oceans are filling up with trash, industrialism / the economy has been growing exponentially for the past 100 years or so, and the stronger the economy the faster we use up resources and issue pollution, and like 97% or so of scientists believe global warming is real, it's human-caused, and it's going to cause massive death in the foreseeable future.

This exponential explosion in technology, industry and economy is just a tiny spec in the history of humanity, let alone the history of the world, so it's very new, and it can't end well.. the earth can't sustain this rate of increase in plundering forever, but it's clear that it's human nature to push this thing until we absolutely can't push it any further--at which time it will have been way too late..