Does it matter? I'd like to see some solutions to the "problem" that amount to more than putting lipstick on a pig, and project to be more effective at fixing the issue than that method of porcine beautification.

People have been forecasting various millenarian crises for millenia. It seems to be what we're good at... Nowadays, we're beyond thinking that the moon demon is going to eat the sun god, or that the four horsemen of the apocalypse will sweep down and bring disease, war, famine and death, Malthusian over-population will have us eating our children, the Y2K bug will result in chaos and rioting, Peak Oil will have us wearing ass-less chaps, hockey masks, and killing each other Mad Max style, nuclear Armageddon will give rise to a race of atomic spiders, and now anthropocentric global warming will... something something, rising sea levels. All of these scares came and went.