Increasingly we are convinced that the Earth and her humanity may overcome looming environmental crises. Climate awareness and local actions are proliferating, Brazil is belatedly cracking down on deforestation and environmental sustainability is again moving to the political front burner. But the Earth will only be sustained in the long-term if we get serious now about ending new environmental damage, while restoring ecosystems that have already been adversely impacted. Humanity has already destroyed, fragmented and diminished ecological systems far beyond the requirements for long-term global ecological sustainability.
Human beings have already changed the environment of the planet radically and have caused many other bio-extinctions of other species. If current trends continue the picture will get worse. The projected extra six billion people in the next hundred years, predicted for 2020 would need more room to live and grow food. If there are more of us, there is less room for plants and animals. There is less room for the tropical rainforests and the planetary biodiversity of species. Human beings are causing extinctions at 100-10,000 times the natural rate. This is the greatest way of extinction since the end of the cretaceous period 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs were annihilated.
The warming climate is undermining biodiversity by accelerating habitat loss, altering the timing of animal migrations and plant flowerings, and shifting some species toward the poles and to higher altitudes.
- The oceans have absorbed about half of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans in the last 200 years. Climate change is altering fish migration routes, pushing up sea levels, intensifying coastal erosion, raising ocean acidity, and interfering with currents that move vital nutrients upward from the deep sea.
- Despite a relatively calm U.S. hurricane season in 2006, the world experienced more weather-related disasters than in any of the previous three years. Nearly 100 million people were affected.
Already, the window to prevent catastrophic climate change appears to be closing. Some governments are starting to redirect their attention away from climate change mitigation and toward staking their claims in a warming world. “Canada is spending $3 billion to build eight new patrol boats to reinforce its claim over Arctic waterways. Denmark and Russia are starting to vie for control over the Lomonosov Ridge, where new sources of oil and natural gas could be accessed if the Arctic Circle becomes ice free-fossil fuels that will further exacerbate climate change. These actions assume that a warming world is here,” said Assadourian.
A United Nations panel warned global warming will cause extinctions to mount, water shortages to spread and droughts and floods to become more frequent as man-made emissions of greenhouse gases cause the Earth to warm.
The Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, small island states and the big river deltas of Asia are among the most vulnerable areas, Martin Parry, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group that produced today’s report, told reporters at a press conference in Brussels. ‘It is the poorest of the poor in the world, even the poorest in the most prosperous nations, who are going to be the worst hit and are the most vulnerable,” IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said. ‘We have far greater regional detail,” than the last IPCC report in 2001, such as the melting of glaciers, sea-level rise, impacts on agriculture and food security.
