News

Extinction

Frontline: Extinction v. Climate

There’s a new frontline on the battlefield between the two baddest armies of environmental change—global warming and biodiversity loss. The question is whether or not to relocate endangered species to ecosystems they’ve never inhabited in order to save them from the real or predicted loss of their natural ecosystems from climate change.

Source: Mother Jones  

Environment, Extinction

October 18

UN warns of mass extinction

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reports that approximately 25% of mammals, 33% of amphibians, 12% of birds, and 20% of plant species currently face the threat of extinction. Furthermore, the AFP reporter says that international conservation group WWF states that people are currently living at a level exceeding the Earth’s biocapacity by more than 50-percent, and that “by 2030 humans will effectively need the capacity of two Earths.”

Source: Red Orbit  

Oceans’ fish could disappear in 40 years: UN

The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned Monday.

“If the various estimates we have received… come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish,” Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program’s green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

Source: AFP  

Third of plants and animals ‘at risk of extinction’

The world’s biodiversity is threatened by the economic growth of countries like China, India and Brazil, the study will say.

While Western countries are increasingly aware of the need to protect endangered species, the developing world’s appetite for raw materials is destroying vulnerable ecosystems, the report’s authors will warn.

Population growth, pollution and the spread of Western-style consumption are also blamed for hitting plant and animal populations.

Source: Telegraph UK  

Bunker mentality: the ultimate underground shelter

Abandon any notion of surviving the apocalypse by doing anything as boringly obvious as running for the highest hill, or eating cockroaches. The American firm Vivos is now offering you the chance to meet global catastrophe (caused by terrorism, tsunami, earthquake, volcano, pole shift, Iran, “social anarchy”, solar flare – a staggering list of potential world-murderers are considered) in style.

Vivos is building 20 underground “assurance of life” resorts across the US, capable of sustaining up to 4,000 people for a year when the earth no longer can. The cost? A little over £32,000 a head, plus a demeaning-sounding screening test that determines whether you are able to offer meaningful contribution to the continuation of the human race.

Source: Guardian UK  
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