The largest-ever group of scientists from across the world have warned that time is running out to save the Earth and urgent action needs to be taken to avoid substantial and irreversible harm to the planet.
Over 15,000 scientists from 184 countries have co-signed a paper titled ‘World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice’, which was published in the journal BioScience.
This is probably the first instance when such a big number of scientists became signatories to any published scientific paper.
Key Highlights
• The initial warning issued 25 years ago identified trends that needed to be reversed to curtail environmental destruction, including ozone depletion, forest loss, climate change
and human population growth.
• The latest paper looks back on the same trends and evaluates the subsequent human response by exploring the available data.
• The article highlighted the negative 25-year global trends including a 26 per cent reduction in the amount of fresh water available per capita and a loss of nearly 300 million acres of forestland.
• It also noted that there has been a collective 29 per cent reduction in the numbers of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish and a 75 per cent increase in the number of dead zones in the ocean.
• It however, shows improvement in one area, which is the ozone layer.
As a conclusion, the research states that there is still time but brings focus on areas that require urgent attention including promoting dietary shifts away from meat, encouraging the adoption of renewable energy and limiting population growth of humans.
Similarly 25 years ago, a majority of the world's living Nobel Laureates had united to sign a warning letter about the Earth.
Comments
All Comments (0)
Join the conversation