Michael Collins - Oops! We're Doomed

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Oops-We-re-Doomed-by-Michael-Collins-111215-68.html

December 15, 2011 By Michael Collins We don't have a substantial cushion between today's climate and dangerous warming. James E. Hanson The head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James E. Hansen, announced the results of break through global warming research last week. The earth's temperature is rising at a much quicker pace than previously anticipated according to research by the nation's preeminent climate scientist. We have little time to reverse the trend. (Image) An example of the dangerous pace of change is emerging on Russia's Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf. Long-frozen permafrost is beginning to melt due to global warming. This threat was identified years ago due to the potential for highly toxic releases of heat-trapping methane gas.  Recent changes are both a surprise and a cause for alarm. There is more methane gas released from the Russian cauldron "than the CH4 emissions estimate for the entire world ocean." Methane is a "far more potent GHG [greenhouse gas] than CO2" with a greater potential to cause "abrupt climate change." At the same time, researchers at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich developed a more efficient analysis of contributors to global warming. They found man-made causes can now be linked with at least 75% of global warming. Hansen's warning is brought to life by the methane gas event starting in the Arctic. We are in the danger zone. By the time we know it's too late, it won't matter. Without prompt, concerted action through readily available technologies and programs, we face increasing calamities through midcentury. After that, the displacement, destruction, and death assume unthinkable proportions. As these evidence-based warnings were issued, the military effort to seize effective control of oil and natural gas regions of the Middle East and Central Asia continued unabated. Ironically, as our rulers engage in endless military conflicts to secure access to oil, they are delivering a weapon of mass destruction, an oil-based economy that will create massive disasters and dislocations that plunge the world into chaos.

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ScienceDaily - Melting Glaciers Reveal Future Alpine World

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111214094650.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2011) — In a hundred years trees may be growing where there are now glaciers. The warm climate of the last few years has caused dramatic melting of glaciers in the Swedish mountains. Remains of trees that have been hidden for thousands of years have been uncovered. They indicate that 13,000 years ago there were trees where there are now glaciers. The climate may have been as much as 3.5 degrees warmer than now. In other words, this can happen again, according to Lisa Öberg, a doctoral candidate at Mid Sweden University in a new study.

In her study Lisa Öberg shows that soon after the inland ice receded, about 13,100 years ago, pines colonized high altitudes in the mountains. A few thousand years later there was a massive invasion of both pines and birches at levels up to 600 m higher than today's treeline. Subsequently the treeline for both pine and birch was gradually lowered as a result of ever-lower temperatures, until the climate made it impossible for trees to grow and glaciers began to form, about 4,400 years ago.

"We used to think that the glaciers were remnants of the latest ice age. The fact that trees grew there so recently shows that the glaciers are no older than 4,400 years," says Lisa Öberg

Lisa Öberg's study is based on finds of tree remains from Helags-Sylarna, Tärna, and Abisko. The age of the tree remains shows that the climate warming of the last century is unique in a perspective of several thousands of years. If any melting corresponding to what is happening today had taken place previously, the wood would probably have been degraded.

"The knowledge we gain by exploiting this unique opportunity is important for our understanding of how alpine plant growth may be impacted by the future climate," says Lisa Öberg.

The fact that nearly 10,000 years ago birches grew 600 m above today's treeline in a climate that was some 3.5 degrees warmer than today shows that trees ought to be able to grow at the same level again, if the temperature rises a few more degrees. "By studying where the treeline ran in the past, we can see what it can be like in the future if it continues to get warmer," says Lisa Öberg.

Read the article "Recent Glacier Recession -- a New Source of Postglacial Treeline and Climate History in the Swedish Scandes" by Lisa Öberg & Leif Kullman here:http://www.LandscapeOnline.de

Steve Connor - Shock as Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice Releases Deadly Greenhouse Gas

Published on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 by The Independent/UK

Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface

by Steve Connor

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

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Claire Provost - Rush for Land a Wake-Up Call for Poorer Countries, Report Says

Published on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/dec/14/rush-for-land-gobal-south

by Claire Provost

Population growth, the increasing consumption of a global elite, and an international legal system skewed in favour of largescale investors are fuelling a worldwide rush for land that is unfolding faster than previously thought and is likely to continue, according to the largest study of international land deals to date.

Researchers estimate that more than 200m hectares of land – over eight times the size of the UK – have been sold or leased between 2000 and 2010. But although the food price crisis of 2007-08 may have triggered a boom in international land deals, the study argues that a much broader set of factors – linked to population growth and the rise of emerging economies – is raising the prospect of "a new era in the struggle for, and control over, land in many areas of the global south".

Forty civil society and research groups fed into the global commercial pressures on land research project, co-ordinated by the International Land Coalition (ILC), which draws on a decade of data to identify and analyse trends in large land acquisitions, and highlights the role of governments in brokering deals that may marginalise rural communities and jeopardise the future of family farming in favour of big industrial projects. This is the most comprehensive study to date of international land deals, pulling together findings from investigations around the world.

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Nina Berman - Air Too Dangerous to Breathe: How Gas Drilling Can Turn Rural Communities Into Industrial Wastelands

By Nina Berman, AlterNet

Posted on December 13, 2011, Printed on December 14, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153417/air_too_dangerous_to_breathe%3A_how_gas_drilling_can_turn_rural_communities_into_industrial_wastelands_%5Bwith_photos%5D

The exploding faucet may have launched the movement against fracking, but it's the unsexy compressor station that is pushing it to maturity.

Last week, more than a hundred activists from Pennsylvania and New York, including actor Mark Ruffalo, brought thousands of gallons of drinking water to 11 families in Dimock, Pa., who had been left dry after Cabot Oil and Gas stopped their water deliveries.

The mess Cabot created in 2009 from shale gas drilling had now been cleaned, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which meant no more water for the Dimock 11, the holdout families in a long-running feud over water contamination and cleanup.

At issue was the safety of well water symbolized by a jug filled with brown fluid taken from Dimock resident Scott Ely's well. Held aloft by Ruffalo, who was flanked by families andGasland director Josh Fox, the crowd challenged officials to come and take a swig if the water was so safe. Paul Rubin, a hydrogeologist, painted a grim picture, laying out a future of continued water contamination. The Ely water had arsenic, manganese, aluminum, iron, and lead at several times the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for safe drinking water.

The visuals were dramatic, and the anti-frack action ended with supporters triumphantly holding a huge water line that snaked from a tanker truck on Carter Road to a family's "water buffalo" — a large storage tank. The Dimock 11 were now supplied.

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STAN FINGER - 2011 sets record for billion-dollar disasters

Posted on Tue, Dec. 13, 2011

http://www.kansas.com/2011/12/13/2138513/2011-sets-record-for-billion-dollar.html

By STAN FINGER
The Wichita Eagle

A year that has rewritten many records linked to violent weather has added another record: the most billion-dollar disasters in American history.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week added two more billion-dollar disasters to this year’s list, bringing the total to 12.

That’s three more than 2008, and NOAA officials are still gathering damage figures for Tropical Storm Lee and the snowstorm that struck the northeastern United States just before Halloween.

The number of billion-dollar disasters nationally this year is “quite alarming,” said Chance Hayes, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Wichita.

They have spanned the spectrum, from killer tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast to massive flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to widespread drought and wildfires in the Southern Plains.

Kansas is included in half of the disasters: four tornado outbreaks, the flooding along the Missouri River and the southern Plains drought that saw Wichita set a record for most 100-degree days in a single year.

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Steve Connor - Shock as Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice Releases Deadly Greenhouse Gas

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

Published on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 by The Independent/UK

Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface

by Steve Connor

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

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Christine Shearer - Will Fossil Fuel Companies Face Liability for Climate Change?

Friday 9 December 2011

by: Christine Shearer, Conducive Chronicle

http://www.truth-out.org/will-fossil-fuel-companies-face-liability-climate-change/1323803340

In a recent article [4] in National Journal, Americans for Prosperity [5] (AFP) President Tim Phillips said there is no question that AFP and others like it have been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science: “We’ve made great headway. What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril.”

AFP is a section 501(c)(4) [6] organization, meaning it does not have to disclose its donors, but has been tied to significant funding [7] from the Koch Family Foundations [8] - founded by the billionaire Koch brothers of Koch Industries – as well as smaller donations from companies like ExxonMobil. Koch Industries [9] and ExxonMobil [10] are among the largest funders of studies questioning climate change science, often drawn upon by conservative politicians to legitimize their view that regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is not needed because the science is still under debate.

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enenews.com - “Very, Very Serious”: Unit No. 4 leaning, in danger of falling — Gov’t confirms stabilization efforts underway (PHOTO & VIDEO)

Published: May 10th, 2011 
By ENENEWS ADMIN 

http://enenews.com/very-very-serious-reactor-no-4-leaning-in-danger-of-falling-govt-confirms-stabilization-efforts-underway-video

Nuclear collapse looms? Fukushima No. 4 reactor ‘leaning’, RT, May 10, 2011:

ScienceDaily - Tropical Sea Temperatures Influence Melting in Antarctica

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111206095649.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2011) — Accelerated melting of two fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely the result, in part, of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new University of Washington research.

Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.

"This part of Antarctica is affected by what's happening on the rest of the planet, in particular the tropical Pacific," he said.

The research involves the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, two of the five largest glaciers in Antarctica. Those two glaciers are important because they drain a large portion of the ice sheet. As they melt from below, they also gain speed, draining the ice sheet faster and contributing to sea level rise. Eventually that could lead to global sea level rise of as much as 6 feet, though that would take hundreds to thousands of years, Steig said.

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American Society for Horticultural Science - Blue light irradiation promotes growth, increases antioxidants in lettuce seedlings

Public release date: 12-Dec-2011
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/asfh-bli121211.php

American Society for Horticultural Science

Treated seedlings are healthier, more vigorous after transplanting

ABIKO, JAPAN—The quality of agricultural seedlings is important to crop growth and yield after transplantation. Good quality seedlings exhibit characteristics such as thick stems, thick leaves, dark green leaves, and large white roots. Scientists have long known that plant development and physiology are strongly influenced by the light spectrum, which affects seedling structure. Raising seedlings irradiated with blue light has been shown to increase crop yield after planting because of the high accumulation of phenolic compounds. Although most studies with blue light only or blue mixed with red light have indicated that blue light-containing irradiation produces higher plant biomass, recent research has suggested that yield and crop quality could be improved by controlling light quality.

Researchers from Japan's Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry premiered a study in HortScience that determined the effects of raising seedlings with different light spectra—such as with blue, red, and blue + red LED lights—on seedling quality and yield of red leaf lettuce plants. Photosynthetic pigments, polyphenols, and antioxidant activity of lettuce seedlings treated with different light spectra were also determined.

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Stephen Leahy - Indigenous Peoples Call for REDD Moratorium

Published on Monday, December 12, 2011 by Tierramérica / Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/12-8

by Stephen Leahy

DURBAN, South Africa - A new coalition of indigenous peoples and local communities called for a moratorium on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programs, a key part of the negotiations for a new international climate treaty that took place over the last two weeks in South Africa.

According to the United Nations, REDD is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development. REDD+ goes beyond deforestation and forest degradation, and includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. But, say indigenous and climate activists,"This is not a solution to climate change. The same extractive industries are involved and it allows them to continue raping Mother Earth." (Credit: World Rainforest Movement | www.wrm.org.uy) The new Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD and for Life issued a statement stating that based on "in-depth investigations, a growing number of recent reports provide evidence that indigenous peoples are being subjected to violations of their rights as a result of the implementation of REDD+-type programs and policies."

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Rich Bindell - Are Privatized Water Utilities in Cahoots With Shale Gas Companies?

Published on Monday, December 12, 2011 by Food & Water Watch Blog

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/are-privatized-water-utilities-in-cahoots-with-shale-gas-companies/

by Rich Bindell

On one hand, we have shale gas companies who have been rushing into various regions of the country to extract gas using a dangerous extraction process that involves toxic chemicals potentially contaminating our drinking water. On the other hand, we also have investor-owned water utilities (IOU’s) who are taking a public resource out of the hands of the public and profiting greatly from it. What happens when you put them both together? The results are revealed in the latest Food & Water Watch Report, Why the Water Industry is Promoting Shale Gas Development and they could involve the over-generalization of water quality tests, increased water rates and big profits… for the investors.

The report details big concerns about the sketchy relationship between IOU’s and gas companies, including the possibility that IOU’s would protect their investment even if it meant downplaying the risks of contamination caused by their new customers: shale gas companies.

Not only that, but water contamination in a community can lead to new customers for the private water utilities when they need to find a new source of drinking water. Look at what’s happening in Pavillion, Wyoming and Dimock, Pennsylvania, and you can see that this could be a tricky relationship to monitor. If your household relies on its own drinking water well and it suddenly becomes contaminated, you might have to deal with switching to an IOU to provide your water. They can benefit from contamination.

The report also points to IOU’s giving gas-drilling companies discounted rates for water—an average of 45 percent less than residential customers, in the case of one IOU. This sets the tone for water—a public resource —to be sold cheaply to shale gas companies, giving IOU’s a handsome profit. And this water would be used for fracking, which could potentially contaminate water sources.

Do we really want to sell our clean water up the river?

Rich Bindell is a senior writer and outreach specialist at Food & Water Watch.

Leo Hickman - Could the desert sun power the world?

Green electricity generated by Sahara solar panels is being hailed as a solution to the climate change crisis

Leo Hickman

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 December 2011 15.30 EST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/11/sahara-solar-panels-green-electricity?intcmp=122

During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt's lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain's mines.

"The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism," wrote Shuman in a letter to Scientific American magazine the following year. But the outbreak of the first world war just a few months later abruptly ended his dream and his solar troughs were soon broken up for scrap, with the metal being used for the war effort. Barbarism, it seemed, had prevailed.

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Mike Ludwig - Under Industry Pressure, USDA Works to Speed Approval of Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Crops

Monday 12 December 2011

by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

http://www.truth-out.org/under-industry-pressure-usda-works-speed-approval-monsantos-genetically-engineered-crops/1323453319

For years, biotech agriculture opponents have accused regulators of working too closely with big biotech firms when deregulating genetically engineered (GE) crops. Now, their worst fears could be coming true: under a new two-year pilot program at the USDA, regulators are training the world's biggest biotech firms, including Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta, to conduct environmental reviews of their own transgenic seed products as part of the government's deregulation process.

This would eliminate a critical level of oversight for the production of GE crops. Regulators are also testing new cost-sharing agreements that allow biotech firms to help pay private contractors to prepare mandatory environmental statements on GE plants the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering deregulating. 

The USDA launched the pilot project in April and, in November, the USDA announced vague plans [3] to "streamline" the deregulation petition process for GE organisms. A USDA spokesperson said the streamlining effort is not part of the pilot project, but both efforts appear to address a backlog of pending GE crop deregulation petitions that has angered big biotech firms seeking to rollout new products.

Documents obtained by Truthout from a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request reveal that biotech companies, lawmakers and industry groups have put mounting pressure on the USDA in recent years to speed up the petition process, limit environmental impact assessments and approve more GE crops. One group went as far as sending USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack a timeline of GE soybean development that reads like a deregulation wish list. 

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Isaiah Esipisu - Saving the Forests with Indigenous Knowledge

By Isaiah Esipisu*

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106156

DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 9, 2011 (IPS) - For the Laibon community, a sub-tribe of Kenya’s Maasai ethnic group, the 33,000-hectare Loita Forest in the country’s Rift Valley Province is more than just a forest. It is a shrine.

"It is our shrine. Our Gods live there. We gather herbs from the place. We use it for bee- keeping. It therefore forms part of our livelihood," said Olonana Ole Pulei, who is in Durban, South Africa, to represent his community at the ongoing 17th Conference of Partiesunder the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

According to Nigel Crawhall, the Director of Secretariat for the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC), different African communities have incredible indigenous knowledge that they use in the conservation of forests and biodiversity in general, and this should be recognised during the negotiations in Durban. 

"Different communities have different practices that they use in forestry conservation," he said. 

Crawhall gave an example of how the Bambuti and Batwa pygmy communities, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, conserved the forest using traditional methods. Both communities depend on the biodiversity of animal life in the equatorial forests in order to survive. 

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Josh Fox - Shale Gas Drilling's Dirty Secret Is Out

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/09/shale-gas-drilling-epa-fracking-water-contamination

Published on Saturday, December 10, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

The EPA's findings about fracking's contamination of ground water have sent a shockwave through a gas industry in denial

by Josh Fox

Thursday's stunning announcement from US EPA that implicates hydrofracturing ("fracking") as the cause of groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming is news that has rocked the world. But as groundbreaking and innovative as the investigation has been, the news comes as no surprise to anyone who has been following fracking closely. 

Anyone who lives in a gas drilling area can tell you: fracking contaminates groundwater. Citizens have been shouting this at the top of their lungs in fracking areas since shortly after the process of hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005, paving the way for the largest gas drilling boom in domestic history. The exemption, known as the "Halliburton Loophole", allows fracking companies to inject toxic chemicals under the ground in huge quantities and not report it to the EPA. But with this much fracking going on, with thousands of wells being drilled and fracked in 34 states, and with thousands of reported cases of contamination, the gas industry just can't keep their secrets buried; they keep bubbling up through the ground.

Since April 2009, I have been documenting the water contamination in the gas fracking field in Pavillion, Wyoming. The testimony of Pavillion cowboys John Fenton, Louis Meeks and Jeff Locker and their incredible families is some of the most stirring in our film Gasland. Since that time, I have been closely following the extensive three-year EPA investigation, and the results have shown over and over again that there were contaminants in the groundwater, which posed a significant health risk to the residents.

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Stephen Leahy - Draft Climate Deal Dubbed a "Death Sentence for Africa"

Published on Saturday, December 10, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/10-0

by Stephen Leahy

DURBAN, South Africa - No one is happy late Friday at the very contentious U.N. climate talks that went into extra time on Saturday. As the lights flicker on a rainy night here, the partial power failure echoes the failure of the multilateral process, according to civil society and some countries.

"If countries agree to the text as it stands, they will be passing a death sentence on Africa," said Nnnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International and a Nigerian activist.

And yet African countries and other vulnerable countries might go along because they will be bullied or bribed, said Bassey.

When Bolivia stood up to the United States at the Copenhagen climate meet in December 2009, Washington pulled its development aid the next year.

"Delegates must show that they care about the devastation across the continent and small island states .... or are they going to yield to arm twisting because a few dollars are being hoisted about," Bassey said.

So far African countries are not blocking an agreement, he told IPS.

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Anneli Rufus - Bugs and Krill, the Other White Meats: Time to Start Eating at the Bottom of the Food Chain

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet

Posted on December 7, 2011, Printed on December 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153359/bugs_and_krill%2C_the_other_white_meats%3A_time_to_start_eating_at_the_bottom_of_the_food_chain

The Eon Coffee Shop in Hayward, California serves krill. Mezcal -- a Mexican restaurant in nearby San Jose -- serves grasshoppers.

Whales and birds eat these things. A growing number of cutting-edge chefs think you should too.

They say the most sustainable way to eat creatures, if you eat them at all, is by dining at the bottom of the food chain. These organisms -- best known as bait, feed or vermin -- breed so easily and exist in such vast quantities as to be far more sustainable protein sources than, say, halibut or beef. A single baleen whale consumes up to 8,000 pounds of krill daily. Worldwide insect biomass exceeds human biomass by two hundredfold. We might manage to eat every last barnacle and roach, but we would really have to try.

It's a massive paradigm shift: Raised on steak, facing a dung-beetle future.

The rich and powerful have always eaten whatever is rare, expensive to farm, difficult to breed and hard to catch. The poor and powerless have always eaten whatever is cheap, free and plentiful.

But we might all be fighting over roadkill by 2050, according to a new UN report.

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Vandana Shiva - The Anthropocene Age

Eco Watch   11-30-2011

Dr. Vandana Shiva

http://ecowatch.org/2011/the-anthropocene-age-humanity%E2%80%99s-choice-to-be-destructive-or-creative/

We have moved out of the Holocene Age that began 10,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene. It comes from the greek words “holos” (whole) and “kainos” (new). This age provided the stable climate which gave us the conditions for our culture and material evolution as a human species.

Scientists are now saying we have entered a new age, the Anthropocene age, the age in which our species, the human, is becoming the most significant force on the planet. Current climate change and species extinction are driven by human activities and the very large ecological footprint of our species.

Climate catastrophes and extreme climate events are already taking lives—the floods in Thailand in 2011, in Pakistan and Ladakh in 2010, the forest fires in Russia, more frequent and intense cyclones and hurricanes, severe droughts and intense flooding are examples of how humans have destabilized the climate system of our self-regulated planet which has given us a stable climate for the past 10000 years. Humans have pushed 75 percent agricultural biodiversity to extinction because of industrial farming. Between 3 to 300 species are being pushed to extinction every day.

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