[Scotsman]

As I sit having my morning coffee, I have to wonder, is intelligent life a self exterminating evolutionary path?

Now before you say I'm being a doomsday nut or whatever, take a moment to consider what has made me wonder such a thing. Our intelligence created all these wonderful machines to make life easier, but at the same time these same machines have polluted our environment to the point that there is little debate that global climate change is real. The debates now are how dramatic and how quickly this change is going to occur. http://www.pewclimate.org/

Then there is SETI http://www.seti.org, who after years of searching has yet to find evidence of intelligent life. Granted the galaxy is a big place, but astronomers have already been finding planets orbiting nearby stars http://exoplanets.org/.

So the question just comes to my mind, does intelligent life wind up extinguishing itself when it reaches a certain level either through pollution or warfare? Is this the path the human race is heading down? Of if we are, are we as a race intelligent enough to change that direction? Myself, I would like to think we are, but watching the leaders at least in this country I have to wonder.