Who is the biggest threat to civilization?

[Truthiness Inspector]

If you had to pick one, and only one, who would it be?

I included "other" because I know at least one responder will ask why it isn't there, LOL.

[azurnoir]

1. Other, a combination of the first 3. n/t

[uppityperson]

2. Fundamentalists.

[havocmom]

3. biggest corporations

there is never enough for those bozos

[Initech]

4. The religious extremists running Congress

This includes uber-fundies like Rick Santorum, John Cornyn, and nearly-convicted felon Tom DeLay.

[Orrin_73]

5. Global warming

I know its different then others, but religious extremism has always been there. Global warming is such a threatening phenomenon that if we dont stop it, it will destroy our civilization.

[mnhtnbb]

6. Other--the neocons.

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. Not a 'who', a 'what'...

the vaunted 'American way of life', that results in 5% of the world's population using 40% of the world's resources and fully a quarter of the world's petroleum. If you want a 'who', I suppose that by extension it's Americans in general, or at least those Americans who live, as all too many do, in indifferently built and poorly-insulated houses in the suburbs that requires constant air conditioning in the summer and constant heating in the winter, who drive forty or sixty or a hundred miles every day to and from work, who spend money they don't even have on useless things they don't actually need because insecurity, advertising and social competition have made them WANT them, and who are arrogant, ignorant, and selfish enough to think that they have the RIGHT to live this way and should be able to continue to do so forever, regardless of the costs (which range from environmental destruction and global warming to sweatshop exploitation of third-world labour to military adventurism in the name of US economic interests and ensuring American access to resources).

[greyl]

8. True, but it's not just an American(United States) way of life.

It's a several thousand year old attitude which says that Earth was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule it.

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. Not just a US way of life, no...

but compared to everyone else on the planet, the US is doing the most damage (especially considering what a small number of the total population of the planet actually live in this country).

[greyl]

11. I totally agree.

It would nice if we became an example for one way of doing it successfully, rather than how to fuck up on a globally disastrous scale, eh? ;)

Gore '08! :)

edit: clarity.

[greyl]

10. The civilization itself.

Our civilization looks to me to be a failing experiment in human culture.
Fundamentalists of all kinds only impede rational change for the better, and we're all familiar with the disastrous momentum of the arrogant and stubborn BFEE, which is really just a malignant expression of what our civilization values.

edit: spling, plus the reminder that there are thousands of successful human cultures on this planet today, which should give us all hope that it's possible. www.nativeplanet.org

[557188]

12. All

All of the above.