Green Menace

When has science been more important to humanity than now?

Perhaps in Darwin’s time, when he explained that life comes from pre-existing life rather than from the thought processes of a godhead. Perhaps, in a metaphysical sense, when Galileo proclaimed that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of the opposite.

Maybe when Avicenna figured out 1,000 years ago that sickness was contagious, or when Pasteur solidified the germ theory of disease in the 19th century and humans could therefore prevent and eventually treat infection.

But while each of these scientific advances had a huge effect on humans—mainly psychologically and medically—today, science is at the forefront of the quest to see if we are capable of survival. It is our future, rather than the past or present, that science is trying to discern. This is the most noble of human pursuits.

And today, these soothsayers are not primarily the physicists, like Galileo, or the...