What is With Humanity's Obsession with Doomsday?

Japan has awarded its top scientific honours to MIT professor Dennis Meadows, who thinks it will all be over by 2100. In 1972, he lead a study on human growth trends and predicted that would be the year in which everything falls apart. He has gotten an award and a beefy $500,000 grant for his work. His study has been called alarmist and anti-technology be many. This study is completely irrelevant though in the grand scheme of things because it's hardly unique. Maybe some psychologist out there can answer this for me. I have my theories but I really would like a definitive answer for this question. What gives with mankind's obsession with the end of the world? It seems like that's all we talk about these days. Asteroids, economic crashes, global warming, overpopulation, world war, civil war, race war, class war, nuclear war, war war. By my count, following the claims of prophets and madmen through history, the world should have ended 1000 times over by now, at least. How did we as a species get so negative about the future? I'm just sick of hearing about it.

Source: National Post