In my mind, there's no doubt that our planet is in serious trouble. However, the problems facing us are altogether new and not even hinted about in Scripture: Unconstrained population growth in third world countries, overreliance on fossil fuel and climate change. Witnesses like to trot out Rev. 11:18 as putative prophecy about environmental degradation but a closer look shows that Rev. is echoing the words about the Noachian deluge and speaking of people ruining the earth with violence. While it's true that there are parts of the world where people are starving, there are actually more people on this planet who are obese. (Shoot--I want to include a link to the Scientific American podcast on this topic but for some reason it won't let me)
And disease? It boggles my mind that they are trying to pitch this as being a worse problem than at other times in human history! It's particularly intersting to check out the WHO's Millenium Goals update at its website. In fact, evidence that people are actually in far better health now than at any other time is the fact that we even have a population boom! Even in underdeveloped countries where AIDS is prevalent, people for the most part are living longer and their kids are surviving to reproduction age.
I'm not Pollyanna-ish over the state our planet is in. But the fact is, disease, hunger, and warfare are not worse now than ever before--it's the other problems we need to worry about. And, no, earthquakes are not one of them.
