GLOBAL MELTDOWN

The catalogue of disasters that are happening right now

Across the planet, rising temperatures are taking their toll

CARBON DIOXIDE

New research has found that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main cause of global warming - are higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years. HOTTEST EVER

This year is expected to be the warmest ever recorded; 1998 was the hottest so far, but the past three years currently occupy the next three places.

DESERTIFICATION

The giant Kalahari desert, already four times the size of Britain, threatens to become larger still, covering farmland in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

EXPANDING OCEANS

The level of the world's seas and oceans is rising twice as fast as in the past, as their waters expand in rising temperatures and glaciers melt.

OCEAN EXILES

The people of the Carteret Islands, a scattering of atolls off Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific, have started to leave as their homes succumb to rising seas.

HURRICANES

Hurricane Epsilon - the 14th of the year - is forming in the Atlantic, even though the worst recorded hurricane season by far formally ended on Wednesday.

GLACIER MELT

Greenland glaciers have suddenly started racing towards the sea and melting. Much the same is beginning to happen to glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

WATER SHORTAGE

Areas such as the western USA, which depend on mountain snows for their water supplies, are running short as less snow falls - and what does fall melts earlier.

DISAPPEARING SPECIES

Sealife and birdlife have declined catastrophically this year along America's north-west Pacific coast, after a similar meltdown in the North Sea.

CORAL REEFS

Corals on the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching out and dying as sea temperatures rise and scientists fear that the whole reef may perish by 2050.
Also in this section

The Earth is our home which we share with uncounted other life forms, plants, animals, insects etc. The Earth is a being which is alive and we as the human species are part of it, part of its great natural cycles, part of the food-chains which sustain all life.

At this time we can observe the rapid change of global natural balances. Can we live up to the challenge and re-establish attitudes of care and respect for the whole of the earth and its life systems? Can we help lighten the strain and heal the damage we are inflicting on the delicate natural balances of nature, both globally and in our local environments?

Only One Earth

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.” ~Rumi

The Challenges

  • Planet under pressure BBC News explores the planet's most pressing environmental problems in a six-part series.

Climate Change

Fossil Fuel Dependency and Increasing Energy Demands

Global Economic Issues

Degradation of the Environment and Species Extinction

Overpopulation, Urbanisation and Disconnection from Nature

Toward a Sustainable Future: Positive Visions of Social Transformation

  • Global Minds Internet Browser: a free alternative browser that provides easy access to websites and content with a holistic point of view, and a guide to products and services that inspire saner, healthier, sustainable choices.
  • Biomimicry: "A new science that studies nature's models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems", that "uses an ecological standard to judge the "rightness" of our innovations" and that "introduces an era based not on what we can extract from the natural world, but on what we can learn from it."
  • Joanna Macy - The Great Turning
  • The Earth Charter Initiative calls us to "declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations" and to "join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace". The Earth Charter can be read here.
  • Guy Dauncey - EarthFuture
  • William Commanda - A Circle of All Nations
  • David Suzuki - The Suzuki Foundation
The Nature of Things A CBC documentary series about nature and the environment that has been a regular part of Canadian tv broadcasting since 1960. David Suzuki became the host in 1970.
  • Ryan Hreljac - founder of Ryan's Well. In 1998, at the age of six, Ryan set out to raise $70 to help build a well for a village in Africa... and kept going. Now, at thirteen, he and his friends have raised over $1,000,000 to bring clean water to African villagers. Read his inspiring story of the "power of one" here.
  • Union of Concerned Scientists Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions
  • Positive News from around the World


Page last modified on April 12, 2006, at 05:22 PM