“The future that we’ve all thought was going to be so much further down the line, or 2100, and catastrophic, it’s already happening now.”
Democracy Now! (2/12/19)
A new report finds at least a third of the Himalayan ice cap will melt by the end of the century due to climate change, even if the world’s most ambitious environmental reforms are implemented. The report, released by the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment earlier this month, is the culmination of half a decade’s work by over 200 scientists, with an
Things are happening. They’re accelerating. And it’s very, very clear where we are in this crisis.
additional 125 experts peer reviewing their work. It warns rising temperatures in the Himalayas could lead to mass population displacement, as well as catastrophic food and water insecurity. The glaciers are a vital water source for the 250 million people who live in the Hindu Kush Himalaya range, which spans from Afghanistan to Burma. More than 1.5 billion people depend on the rivers that flow from the Himalayan peaks.
We speak with Dahr Jamail, independent journalist and Truthout staff reporter. He is the author of the new book “The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption.”
Link to Story, Transcript and 25-Minute Video
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‘We Have Entered the Age of Environmental Breakdown’: Report Details World On Edge Of Runaway Collapse
By
Warning that the world is on a path toward “environmental breakdown” that will likely trigger “runaway collapse” of social and economic systems in the vein of the 2008 global financial crisis, a new report out Tuesday calls for major shifts in understanding the scale and pace of environmental change, the implications of it, and the need for a transformational response.
The report—titled This Is a Crisis: Facing Up to the Age of Environmental Breakdown (pdf)—from the U.K.-based progressive think tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), declares that “mainstream political and policy debates have failed to recognize that human impacts on the environment have reached a critical stage, potentially eroding the conditions upon which socioeconomic stability is possible.”
“Human-induced environmental change is occurring at an unprecedented scale and pace and the window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic outcomes in societies around the world is rapidly closing,” the report advises. “These outcomes include economic instability, large-scale involuntary migration, conflict, famine and the potential collapse of social, and economic systems. The historical disregard of environmental considerations in most areas of policy has been a catastrophic mistake.” ….
(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.)
Read the Rest and 2-Minute Video
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Politicians Are Complicit In The Killing Of Our Insects – We Will Be Next
Since I was a teenager, the Earth has lost half of all its wildlife. To avoid today’s teenagers being left with no wildlife at all by the time they are my age, we need to act fast.
By Molly Scott Cato
The Guardian (2/12/19)
Most of us spend more time swatting away or avoiding wasps and moths than we do contemplating their importance to the web of life. But it is no exaggeration to say that the horrifying decline in the number of these creatures – the most widespread on Earth – is a barometer for the whole planet.
The new global scientific review into the perilous condition of our insects reports that more than 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction while the mass of insects is declining by 2.5% a year. This catastrophic decline is a direct cause of the existential threat to other animals, insects being at the bottom of the chain and the primary food source. Since 1970, 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been wiped out.
The review identifies a key driver towards this mass extinction: habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture with its associated use of pesticides. Given this is a manmade disaster, surely we are capable of tackling and reversing it?