I come at this from a different perspective, where I was not raised in the JW faith but it was the focus on eschatology that made the religion attractive to me above all other factors.
You see, although I was considered to be "bright" in school, I was small and physically weak, socially clueless, naïve and emotionally immature. By the time I was in high school, especially towards the end, I had become very lonely, withdrawn, hateful, pessimistic and paranoid. I barely graduated. I became an obsessive fan of the heavy metal band Metallica and spent many hours listening to lead singer James Hetfield's growling and melancholy vocal melodies (with lyrics concerning such subject matter such as nuclear war, suicide, capital punishment, etc.) over furious, thrashing music. A sample of their lyrics, from the song Fight Fire with Fire (check it out on Youtube to get the full effect of the song, it is very intense):
Do unto others
as they've done to you
what, what, the hell is
this world coming to?
Blow the universe
into nothingness
nuclear warfare
shall lay us to rest!
Fight fire with fire
Ending is near
Fight fire with fire
Bursting with fear
We all shall die!
[...]
Soon to fill our lungs
the hot winds of death
The gods are laughing
so take your last breath
"Soon to fill our lungs, the hot winds of death" - that is brilliant stuff, and I deeply identified with such hopeless sentiments as this. But, Armageddon is not an acceptable subject in polite society, and I found that my extremely dark and pessimistic outlook on life met mostly with raised eyebrows and 'uh, yeah, well, it's been nice talking you!' reactions.
You can imagine how thrilled I was to have my pessimism seemingly legitimized when I came into contact with JW's and learned about their beliefs. I was on cloud 9, for a while anyways. But after 10 years of that, I realized that the the WTS is by-and-large a group of goofy old men that are making it up as they go along and who care about little except maintaining their imagined authority, and upon this realization I walked away and never looked back.
I do believe that humans have way overextended themselves population-wise, and that we are indeed 'ruining the earth'. I believe that the next 100 years could be a make-or-break period for the human family, and being naturally inclined towards pessimism, I'm not hopeful.
The idea of living forever on earth is incomprehensible to me, and I'm not sure that I ever really believed it. And I don't think that living forever is even the point of JWism. The point of JWism is not dying. Death is terrifying. I'm terrified of it. I hate that I will die. But I will. Everybody does. And circumstances could arise that could cause many of us to die in the same day or week or month or year, far above the normal rate. But what can I do? Last month a tornado blasted through an area in Western Iowa and caused several deaths at a Boy Scout jamboree. We survive on the idea that the universe is, on the whole, a benevolent place, but such events turn that notion on its ear. We are alone in an indifferent universe.
smile
