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Category: Humanity

Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

Air pollution is shaving years from people’s lives

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McClatchy reports: People could add years to their lives in California and other smog-plagued parts of the world if authorities could reduce particulate pollution — soot from cars and industry — to levels recommended by the World Health Organization, a new study reported Monday. No other large U.S. city would benefit more than Fresno, which has soot concentrations at roughly twice the WHO guidelines. Fresno residents would live a year longer if the region could meet the health organization’s recommended…

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Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN

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The Guardian reports: The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief. Ahead of a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems, Cristiana Pașca Palmer said people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that…

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Humanity’s preoccupation with short-term gains threatens the future of life on Earth

Humanity’s preoccupation with short-term gains threatens the future of life on Earth

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Jane Goodall writes: We are experiencing the sixth great extinction. The most recent report from WWF describes the situation as critical – in the last 40 years, we have lost some 60% of all animal and plant species on Earth. We are poisoning the soil through large-scale industrial agriculture. Invasive species are choking out native animal and plant life in many places. Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere by our reliance on fossil fuels, destruction of the rain forests…

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Call to protect dwindling wilderness ‘before it disappears forever’

Call to protect dwindling wilderness ‘before it disappears forever’

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Mongabay reports: New, highly detailed maps now reveal the state of the world’s wilderness, both on land and at sea, and the picture looks bleak. In a series of recent studies, a group of researchers led by ecologist James Watson of the Wildlife Conservation Society and Australia’s University of Queensland analyzed the surface of Earth for significant human activity, such as roads and railways, pastures and farmland, and population centers, at a resolution of 1 square kilometer (0.4 square miles)….

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Humanity is destroying life on Earth

Humanity is destroying life on Earth

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  The Guardian reports: Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation. The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the…

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As rich nations close the door on refugees, Uganda welcomes them

As rich nations close the door on refugees, Uganda welcomes them

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The New York Times reports: President Trump is vowing to send the military to stop migrants trudging from Central America. Europe’s leaders are paying African nations to block migrants from crossing the Mediterranean — and detaining the ones who make it in filthy, overcrowded camps. But Solomon Osakan has a very different approach in this era of rising xenophobia. From his uncluttered desk in northwest Uganda, he manages one of the largest concentrations of refugees anywhere in the world: more…

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Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

Humanity is ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

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The Guardian reports: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, including the branch we are sitting on, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5bn years. Furthermore, even if the destruction of wild areas, poaching and pollution were ended within 50 years and extinction rates…

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Limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require deep emissions cuts

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require deep emissions cuts

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Climate Central reports: The Paris Climate Change Agreement set a goal of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F).” In that agreement, world leaders asked the IPCC, the preeminent climate science body, “to provide a Special Report in 2018 on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.” After being formally…

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A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

A growing wave of extinctions is sweeping across the continents

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The Guardian reports: Spix’s macaw, a brilliant blue species of Brazilian parrot that starred in the children’s animation Rio, has become extinct this century, according to a new assessment of endangered birds. The macaw is one of eight species, including the poo-uli, the Pernambuco pygmy-owl and the cryptic treehunter, that can be added to the growing list of confirmed or highly likely extinctions, according to a new statistical analysis by BirdLife International. Historically, most bird extinctions have been small-island species…

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Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

Wildlife preservation depends on saving animals, their habitats, and their cultures

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Ed Yong writes: In the 1800s, there were so many bighorn sheep in Wyoming that when one trapper passed through Jackson Hole, he described “over a thousand sheep in the cliffs above our campsite.” No such sights exist today. The bighorns slowly fell to hunters’ rifles, and to diseases spread from domestic sheep. Most herds were wiped out, and by 1900, a species that once numbered in the millions stood instead in the low thousands. In the 1940s, the Wyoming…

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Mollie Tibbetts’ father: Don’t distort her death to advance the racism she opposed

Mollie Tibbetts’ father: Don’t distort her death to advance the racism she opposed

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Rob Tibbetts writes: As I write this, I am watching Sen. John McCain lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda and know that evil will succeed only if good people do nothing. Both Mollie and Senator McCain were good people. I know that both would stand up now and do something. The person who is accused of taking Mollie’s life is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people. To suggest otherwise…

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Courageous grassroots leaders provide the best hope to a troubled world

Courageous grassroots leaders provide the best hope to a troubled world

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Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who steps down tomorrow, writes: Across the world, in both the northern and southern hemispheres, there are politicians who are too self-serving, or too spiteful, to care for and protect the most vulnerable. They are not just cowardly but profoundly foolish, because in producing these stress fractures [– the result of decades of mediocre leadership –], they place at risk not only their own futures, but everyone else’s as…

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Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

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The Guardian reports: Rising levels of carbon dioxide could make crops less nutritious and damage the health of hundreds of millions of people, research has revealed, with those living in some of the world’s poorest regions likely to be hardest hit. Previous research has shown that many food crops become less nutritious when grown under the CO2 levels expected by 2050, with reductions of protein, iron and zinc estimated at 3–17%. Now experts say such changes could mean that by…

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The human domination of the face of the Earth

The human domination of the face of the Earth

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By Rhett A. Butler Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world’s tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers — an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined — over the past 35 years, finds a paper published in the journal Nature. But the research also confirms large-scale loss of the planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems, especially tropical forests. The study, led by Xiao-Peng Song and Matthew Hansen of the University of Maryland, is based…

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More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

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Science News reports: Freshwater is crucial for drinking, washing, growing food, producing energy and just about every other aspect of modern life. Yet more than 2 billion of Earth’s 7.6 billion inhabitants lack clean drinking water at home, available on demand. A major United Nations report, released in June, shows that the world is not on track to meet a U.N. goal: to bring safe water and sanitation to everyone by 2030. And by 2050, half the world’s population may…

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