15,000 Scientists Say Threats to Planet now 'Far Worse'

By Earth Logs 10 December 2017

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Twenty-five years after global scientists issued a "warning to humanity" about dangers to the environment, a new update released says most of the planet's problems are getting "far worse." 

More than 15,000 global scientists from 184 countries signed on to the letter, called the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice," published in the journal Bio-Science.

The initial version, released in 1992 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, was signed by 1,700 experts.

Since then, nearly all major threats to the environment have grown more dire, particularly the booming world population, which has added two billion people since 1992, a 35 percent increase, according to the update.

Other key threats are global warming and the ever-mounting carbon emissions driven by fossil fuel use, as well as unsustainable farming practices, deforestation, lack of fresh water, loss of marine life and growing ocean dead zones.

Humanity is now being given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends.

Mass extinction under way and time is running out.

"We are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats,"

Scientists noted it is "especially troubling" that the world continues on a path toward "potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels."

Animals are suffering as a result of human activities, and are disappearing at an unprecedented pace.

We have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.