August 13th is Earth Overshoot Day this year – In less than eight months, humanity has used up nature’s budget for the entire year

OAKLAND, CA, USA, 12 August 2015 (GFN) – In less than eight months, humanity has used up nature’s budget for the entire year, with carbon sequestration making up more than half of the demand on nature, according to data from Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank with offices in North America, Europe and […]

Continued destruction of Earth’s plant life places humankind in jeopardy – ‘The sun’s energy is stored in plants and fossil fuels, but humans are draining energy much faster than it can be replenished’

By James Hataway14 July 2015 Athens, Georgia (UGA) – Unless humans slow the destruction of Earth’s declining supply of plant life, civilization like it is now may become completely unsustainable, according to a paper published recently by University of Georgia researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “You can think of the […]

Graph of the Day: World arable land per capita, 1961-2012

3 July 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Will world agriculture be able to support a human population of 12 billion people in the year 2100? The answer largely turns on how much land is available for growing crops. Unfortunately, the world’s arable land area is declining at an enormous rate. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification […]

Photo gallery: 27 images that suggest the human species is in danger

24. To the last drop: an oilfield in California and the merciless overexploitation of humans. (Hefty) – Sometimes every word is superfluous. These pictures say more than a thousand words. [more] 27 images that prove that we are in danger. #7 left my mouth open. Technorati Tags: oil production,overpopulation,population,mining,global warming,climate change,deforestation,poaching,wildfire,forest fire,pollution

Taps start to run dry in Brazil’s largest city – São Paulo devastated by its worst drought on record – ‘We’re witnessing an unprecedented water crisis in one of the world’s great industrial cities’

[This is an interesting situation: A technogenic climate catastrophe that isn’t caused by global warming, but instead by deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. –Des] By Zachary Davies Boren   23 February 2015 (The Independent) – As Brazil continues to battle a historic drought, millions of people in its largest city are about to run out of […]

5 reasons Peak Food is the world’s No. 1 ticking time bomb

By Paul B. Farrell7 February 2015 (Market Watch) – Global food poisoning? Yes, We’re maxing out. Forget Peak Oil. We’re maxing-out on Peak Food. Billions go hungry. We’re poisoning our future, That’s why Cargill, America’s largest private food company, is warning us: about water, seeds, fertilizers, diseases, pesticides, droughts. You name it. Everything impacts the […]

Graph of the Day: World ecological footprint of human consumption

(UNDP) – Over the years there has been much debate about what sustainability means and about what measures can track sustainable progress— or the lack of it. In 2012 the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio took a broad view that sustainable progress must cover all three dimensions that affect people’s life chances—social, […]

NASA bombshell: Global groundwater crisis threatens our food supplies and our security

By Joe Romm 31 October 2014 (Climate Progress) – An alarming satellite-based analysis from NASA finds that the world is depleting groundwater — the water stored unground in soil and aquifers — at an unprecedented rate. A new Nature Climate Change piece, “The global groundwater crisis,” by James Famiglietti, a leading hydrologist at the NASA […]

True altruism: Can humans change to save other species? ‘What makes us so good at destroying such vast quantities of other creatures is simply the vast quantity of us’

[Short answer: No.] By Verlyn Klinkenborg9 October 2014 (Yale Environment 360) – Ever since Darwin, biologists have been arguing about altruism — the concept that an individual may behave in a way that benefits its species, at a cost to itself. After all, the self-sacrifice implicit in altruistic behavior seems to run against the grain […]

New projection shows human population could reach 12 billion by 2100

By Felicity Nelson      20 September 2014 (Science Alert) – For over a decade, experts worldwide have assumed that population growth would level off by 2050, reaching approximately 9 billion. Now, new projections have turned that analysis on its head. The population analysis, published in Science this week, was conducted by demographer Patrick Gerland from the […]

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