In a Word: eschatology

Dear reader, brace yourself. The end of the world is nigh. It always has been! Such is humanity’s state of perpetual anxiety.

Now let me assure you I am not a climate-change denier. Just that there has always been end-of-the-world scenarios, but not all human-made.

Not that evidence or expert opinion matters to some. Not when it gets in their way. So Donald Trump makes up arguments on why a wall is so necessary between the United States and Mexico. So, in the 2016 Brexit referendum, cabinet minister Michael Gove refused to name any economists who backed Brexit, saying: "People in this country have had enough of experts."

And ever-earnest GAA fans in Mayo are already convinced the county will win a first All-Ireland senior title in 68 years next September 1st , so ending Dublin dreams of five in a row. Sure! At least that is a possibility, while M(e)ssrs Trump and Gove just ignored facts that got in the way.

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There probably hasn't been a generation of humanity that didn't believe they would witness the end of the world. It is a feature of all the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Each has its own branch of theology to deal with it: eschatology, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the part of theology concerned with death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.

It is not just a feature of religion. In my own lifetime it has been believed the world would end thanks to humankind in one great nuclear war, and now climate change. But do you remember the ozone panic?

How it was being so diminished by human activity that it was only a matter of time before we’d all be fried by unfiltered ultraviolet rays from the sun. That was until governments banned chlorofluorocarbons in fridges and aerosols, and the ozone hole began to heal. It can be done.

Similarly with trees. Such was consumption of paper (made from timber) the world was about to be engulfed/suffocated by carbon with so few trees to absorb it. Then along came the internet and the demise of paper.

It means that just as human activity can bring about the end of the world it can also help avoid it. So goodbye climate change? Not just yet!

Eschatology from Greek eskhatos for "last, furthest, most remote". In theology, a study of the four last things (death, judgment, heaven, hell).

inaword@irishtimes.com