Production of selected salts in Mt/year for (a) the world and (b) the United States. Graphic: Graphic: Kaushal, et al., 2023 / Nature Reviews Earth and Environment

Humans are disrupting natural “salt cycle” on a global scale

31 October 2023 (University of Maryland) – The influx of salt in streams and rivers is an ‘existential threat,’ according to a research team led by a UMD geologist. The planet’s demand for salt comes at a cost to the environment and human health, according to a new scientific review led by University of Maryland Geology Professor Sujay Kaushal. Published […]

Alain-Richard Donwahi in May 2017, in Abidjan. Mr. Donwahi is a former Ivory Coast defence minister who led the 2022 UN COP15 summit on desertification. Photo: Sia Kambou / AFP

Global heating likely to hit world food supply before 1.5°C, says UN expert – “Climate change is a pandemic that we need to fight quickly. See how fast the degradation of the climate is going – I think it’s going even faster than we predicted.”

By Fiona Harvey 12 August 2023 (The Guardian) – The world is likely to face major disruption to food supplies well before temperatures rise by the 1.5C target, the president of the UN’s desertification conference has warned, as the impacts of the climate crisis combine with water scarcity and poor farming practices to threaten global […]

Graphs from the “Climate Change and Land 2019” report by the IPCC, showing changes relative to 1961 of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, world agricultural production, food demand, and desertification and land degradation. Graphic: IPCC

World food security increasingly at risk due to “unprecedented” climate change impact, new UN report warns

8 August 2019 (UN News) – More than 500 million people today live in areas affected by erosion linked to climate change, the UN warned on Thursday, before urging all countries to commit to sustainable land use to help limit greenhouse gas emissions before it is too late. Speaking at the launch of a Special […]

Table showing how many Earths humanity would require if everybody in the world lived like the citizens of selected nations, according to Global Footprint Network in 2019. For the U.S., five Earths would be required. For India, 0.7 Earths would be required. Graphic: Global Footprint Network

Earth Overshoot Day 2019 is July 29, the earliest ever

OAKLAND, California, 23 July 2019 – On 29 July 2019, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint. It is Earth Overshoot Day. Its date has moved up two months over the past 20 years to the […]

A worker fills a tanker train with water, which will be transported and supplied to drought-hit city of Chennai, at Jolarpettai railway station in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India, 11 July 2019. Photo: P. Ravikumar / REUTERS

Water train set to relieve drought-hit Indian city – Doctors forced to buy water for surgery – “We won’t be able to supply water even to the people who can pay a huge sum for a tanker of water”

By P. Ravikumar 11 July 2019 JOLARPETTAI, India (Reuters) – Indian authorities on Thursday filled tanks with water and loaded them onto a train in the southern state of Tamil Nadu to supply its manufacturing capital Chennai where reservoirs have run dry. Technicians in the railway station at Jolarpettai, located over 135 miles (217 km) […]

Civilization destroying nature at rate “unprecedented in human history” – Up to 1 million species threatened with extinction, many within decades

Civilization destroying nature at rate “unprecedented in human history” – Up to 1 million species threatened with extinction, many within decades

6 May 2019 (IPBES) – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was […]

Vanishing nutrients: 2 billion people worldwide suffer from “hidden hunger,” in which people are malnourished even though they consume enough calories

By Elena Suglia 10 December 2018 (Scientific American) – Is it possible to starve yourself of nutrients while simultaneously gaining weight? It turns out the answer is yes. According to a growing body of research, rising carbon dioxide levels are making our food less nutritious, robbing key crops of vitamins essential to human development.Studies have […]

World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns

By Damian Carrington 26 October 2016 (The Guardian) – The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations […]

Salting the earth: North Dakota farmers struggle with a toxic byproduct of the oil boom

By Likhitha Butchireddygari 11 August 2018 (NBC News) – Daryl Peterson’s farm has been in his family for as long as he’s been alive. His father passed down the 2,500-acre spread, just a few miles from the Canadian border in Antler, North Dakota, nearly 50 years ago. He and his brother Larry have been farming […]

Earth Overshoot Day 2018 is August 1, the earliest date since ecological overshoot started in the early 1970s – “Our current economies are running a Ponzi scheme with our planet”

OAKLAND, California, 13 June 2018 (Global Footprint Network) – On August 1, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international research organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint resource accounting metric. The Ecological Footprint adds up all of people’s competing demands for productive areas, including […]

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