City lights in this nighttime view of Earth from space provides “an intuitively graspable view of our planet”. (Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr)
It called for a new ethic that encompasses our responsibility to ourselves and nature and that recognizes our dependence on Earth and its natural systems. It also called for stabilizing human population through “improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.” Now, 25 years later, we’ve added two billion people, a 35 per cent increase.
Despite progress in stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, all the other problems scientists looked at in 1992 have worsened.
On the declaration’s 25th anniversary in November, more than 15,000 scientists from around the world signed a new warning — “the most scientists to ever co-sign and formally support a published journal article.” The BioScience article states, “By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere.”
It raises concerns about climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from “burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and agricultural production — particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption.” And it points out, “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.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
