Those civilizations thought that it was the wrath of a god or two, or some war would consume everything. We have actual scientific evidence that our completely unhinged and largely unregulated use of resources that natural creatures have no access to is destroying our planet.
If the difference is hard to grasp then I’m starting to understand why the U.S. has undecided voters right now.
Or maybe it's just the 'we' that's going to be out of the equation, which is fine too I guess. Our particular form of life just isn't that important in the grand scheme of things anyway.
Actually we are important. We have single handedly exterminated more life than any other species. We are now on the same scale of importance as the dinosaur ending asteroid.
Of course, when you change into "the world as we know it", it was already "destroyed" several times in recent history by things like cars and the internet...