Paul Sheehan, and antz everywhere heralding the coming of rain, or perhaps the apocalypse ...

(Above: a CNN poll found that 20% of Americans - nearly 60 million people - believe the Apocalypse will take place in their lifetime. You can hear Nicholas Guyatt interviewed on the BBC here, though you have to get through a lot of BBC nonsense about square sandwiches. Meanwhile, a loon pond poll found that 20% of commentariat columnists - nearly ten people - believe the Apocalypse will take place even sooner if liberal secularist leftist chardonnay sippers are not immediately removed from power).

Catastrophism is one of those basic urges and needs humanity just can't do without, from Noah's ark to 2012.

Fortunately Paul Sheehan is aware of catastrophist thinking, and immune to it, as when he quoted Ian Plimer in his sterling column Beware the climate of conformity, wherein he railed against the orthodoxies of climate change apocalyptic thinkers:

"It is little wonder that catastrophist views of the future of the planet fall on fertile pastures. The history of time shows us that depopulation, social disruption, extinctions, disease and catastrophic droughts take place in cold times … and life blossoms and economies boom in warm times. Planet Earth is dynamic. It always changes and evolves. It is currently in an ice age."

But that was yesterday. Today it's time to look at the ants, and cast the runes and read the I Ching, or perhaps better, Edward O. Wilson's Anthill (excerpt here), and realise the game is up, the goose is cooked, the end is nigh.

Quick, done the sack cloth and ashes, put on the Chicken Little costume, rush out into the fields, shout from the rooftops Watch your step: ants offer a heap of lessons for humanity:

The underlying message in Anthill is humanity has reached a point where it is at war with all other species by consuming so much of the planet's resources. When this happens in nature, there is a crash. There must be a crash.

This Easter, a time of reflection turned into yet another celebration of consumption, Wilson has sent forth tiny messengers with an enormous message.

Sheesh, here I was quietly reflecting while I ate my dark chocolate and hot cross buns, and there's this grumpy old mariner standing outside the wedding warning the guests that the end of the world is nigh.

But last I heard, in Facts conveniently brushed over by the global warming fanatics, is that the pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.

Curiously however there's talk that the problematic concept of climate change might actually help the fire ant invasion of the United States (here). As Alfred Hitchcock noted in his epic movie about invasive wildlife, The Ants is coming (okay, it were the birds, but they'se coming as we fight and fuss and feud with nature). You can read about the peril of these imported foreigner ants and the United States response here.

Well I'm sure the ants have much to teach us, but I still hold out most hope for the humble cockroach, amongst the hardiest insects on the planet. One of the best memes to have solidly infested the intertubes is the notion of cockroaches inheriting the earth if we manage to bung on a nuclear war (here, but google the words and you can dine out for a week on cockies surviving the blast).

But back to Sheehan, and the many insights he teases from Wilson's new novel:

Both the novel and the non-fiction are packed with fascinating details which draw obvious parallels between humans and ants. Does this sound familiar: about 10 per cent of the workers in any ant colony earn elite status by initiating more tasks and working harder than other ants, and scribbling for the Sydney Morning Herald apocalyptic warnings and musings, while some are forced into low-status jobs, such as rubbish collecting, and paying for the privilege of reading the Sydney Morning Herald, a cycle from which there is no escape?

Oops, I see that I somehow managed to mangle that quotation.

Never mind, it's important for us all to understand the cosmic karma of ants:

Karma is simply action with intention. Such action plants a seed that in a future time will sprout. For instance, if on the road you tread on an ant without knowing, there is no karmic consequence. But if you saw an ant and deliberately killed it, then there is karmic consequence. (here).

Meanwhile, there's no doubt a sense of armageddon is in the air, and that it might only be stopped, prevented, or thwarted when Tony Abbott comes to power, and his acting lessons lull the electorate and commentariat columnists into a happier frame of mind.

Which is why it's a tragedy that we've lost Barnaby Joyce from his position of finance spokesman, from which perch he could regularly warn us of armageddon - as in Joyce's Armageddon warning:

Tony Abbott's new finance spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, believes the American Government may default on its debt, triggering an ''economic Armageddon'' that will make the recent global financial crisis pale into insignificance.

Now I'm starting to wonder if Joyce, urged on by Sheehan, had an inside running, heading out into the back paddock to contemplate the ants, and come to an understanding - by observing them and their industrious ways - that an economic armageddon is nigh.

For some strange reason, I'm also reminded of Antz (full script here) and Woody Allen's everyant character Z having a chat with crazed General head honcho ant Formica over a tray of hors d'ouevres:

Z: Wow, what a spread -- you know, there's a food shortage in the rest of the colony.

FORMICA: Yes, and do you know why there's a food shortage?

Z: ...Not enough food?

FORMICA: Negatory. Too many ants. And while we soldiers go out there, and fight, and bleed, and die for the colony, the namby-pamby workers live it up back home.

Feeling a little hot, Z wipes his brow.

Z: Well I, I don't think "living it up" is the right term -- how about "working themselves to death"?

FORMICA: I tell you son, sometimes, at night, I see myself in battle, fighting a horrible, faceless enemy, with the future of our whole species at stake. And always, the dream ends with each of us plunging his sword into the other's heart...

Z: (spooked) Oh, hey, that's great, I think I see an old war buddy over there, it's been fun chatting. Good luck with the hallucinations.

Next week: Paul Sheehan and I retreat to a Buddhist colony, to contemplate the ants, and work out, via a mathematical formula, the precise time when the great crash will come ... as a result of the worker ants failing to vote in a party truly dedicated to mining, progress, growth, climate change denialism, and the profit motive.

(Below: the antz chewing over the end of the world).