The human race is looking down the barrel at its own extinction event. We are destroying our survival system through over-population, runaway global consumerism, environmental degradation and species extinction.

I don't quite see runners comments as not being relevant.
In fact what he contends is only the tip of the iceberg, I imagine 350 words are not enough to fully justify the answer to this topic.
There are too many factors, and probably the leading one, before we get into it subjectively, is the objective one, which is overpopulation.
Take Australia for example, while the bleeding hearts and the jelly brains bleat on about taking in more refugee/migrants, the TRUTH is we cannot/must not.
We cannot 'cater' to a random and unchecked increase in population with the current supply of resources without compromise.
The naive and moronic view is that because we are such a large landmass we are being selfish by rejecting those wanting to settle here.
We are nothing compared to what is going on in the rest of the world.
We have ignorant races who for whatever reasons refuse to stop procreating, indiscriminately.
Now this of itself is not THE only reason why the World is in trouble, but just think about it, if people were a little more aware of what was going on around them, we would not be heading for self destruction.
Just imagine, if the people would settle for one child, we would witness a major drop in world population within three generations.
If we only rely on two off-spring per couple, we would remain as we are, any drop in numbers would be very very slow with only the sick and those dying of illness and accidents would affect the numbers.
But this is only one factor, and there are many many more, this one seems obvious and feasible to enact immediately with immediate results.

IF we started to look for things that bind us together I would be convinced it is not in trouble
The chances of that right now appear to be zero
Is it possible that after we prove we can not live as one some power unknown to us will force us to
I refute runners of this world, we would not have arrived at this place if so many of us are so evil
But we are apathetic, we give more concern to social media than world affairs
Right now, this day, the world rather than stopping the coming conflict with Iran, is taking sides

Dear Belly,

In 2006, the Australian Government's position was
to cast doubt on global warming and refuse to
enter into UN agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol.
Little has changed when ignorance and vested
interests are confronted by scientific facts.

Our science is first class. It's not corrupt.
And new ideas, instead of being welcome for the
opportunities they open up are seen as threats to
those who are comfortable in their ideologies.

There are many reasons for people's apparent
short-sightedness. Psychological ones - why
some favour the present rather than future. Economic reasons,
many have the belief that productivity increases over
time (although this may not hold true indefinitely).
The psychological reasons have to do with risk aversion.
Any one of us might not be around to benefit from a good
time in the future - so let's have it now regardless of the
long-term consequences.

Climate change is real. there are global climate changes -
and the vital signs of the planet are shown in the link below
given by NASA:

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Dear Foxy,

As an environmental sociologist I know you are correct but you will never be able to convince the denialists and those who think it is someone else's problem that we should take immediate action to turn back the clock on anthropogenic activities that are the root cause of global warming. Maybe the problem needs to get to the same level that the CFC destruction of the ozone layer reached back in the late 1980s to convince all of the meatheads that we must act universally if we are to avert our own extinction event.

Foxy Mr Opinion in starting this thread I asked questions
One is still unanswered, who conned me, and you two, and why?
And again, if every western country right now, closed its doors to every refugee every migrant, how would we return those countries to mono cultures
Is such a thing possible, or even a good idea
Why not take the easier path? work together to try living together
Why must the wars driving refugee flows continue?
Surely the reason the UN exists was to stop wars
Even if it makes war to stop them