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This week the sane among us will scoff at those hoarding candles and food for another apocalypse that fails to materialize. We’ll laugh at the accounts of people readying their bunkers and at store shelves being wiped clean. We know that the world will not come to a cataclysmic end on December 21. Here’s what we’re not so good at understanding: We are part of a slowly enfolding tragedy in which the end of the world as we know it may be getting closer and closer. It won’t happen on any particular day that we can pinpoint and there won’t be a giant explosion or a big flood that will wipe everything away. There will be many floods and fires over many years. One species, one crop dying off after another.