Life On Earth Is Under Assault—But There’s Still Hope

National Geographic - Stephen Leahy

A major international report on biodiversity warns of serious threats to all living things, but many solutions are available.

The world has a staggering number of species. But many are going extinct. It's not too late to reverse the trend, scientists warn. Photograph by Frans Lanting, National Geographic Creative
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Medellin, Colombia - The Earth’s life support system is failing. Nearly everywhere, the various forms of non-human life are in decline, according to a series of landmark international reports released Thursday in Medellin, Colombia. This ongoing decline endangers economies, livelihoods, food security, and the quality of life of people everywhere. But at the same time, there is considerable room for hope, based on many solutions with proven track records, the reports say.
The tremendous variety of living species—collectively known as biodiversity—forms the bedrock of our food, clean water, air and energy. “Biodiversity is at the heart not only of our survival, but of our cultures, identities, and enjoyment of life,” said Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
IPBES is the intergovermental group working to safeguard the world’s biodiversity. For the past three years, more than 550 leading experts from more than 100 countries have reviewed more than 10,000 studies and completed four regional scientific assessments of biodiversity—covering the entire planet except the poles and open oceans. These assessments also looked at the causes of biodiversity declines and how government policies could help slow them down and even reverse them. The reports were approved in a final plenary meeting Thurday by the 129 countries that are members to IPBES.


Related: See How Marine Reserves Protect Biodiversity

“There is no question the continued loss of biodiversity undermines human well-being. Everyone will suffer, but especially the poor,” Watson said in an interview.
These losses are driven mainly by unsustainable consumption of resources, including deforestation and expansion of agriculture, along with pollution, climate change, and impacts of invasive alien species.
One of the studies in the assessment, published in the journal Science, found that 58 percent of Earth's land surface—where 71 percent of all humans live—has already lost enough biodiversity "to question the ability of ecosystems to support human societies.”
But the IPBES assessment also documents conservation success stories and identifies key strategies that can be applied elsewhere.

Global Threats
The Americas are home to 40 percent of global nature today, but they have experienced significant declines since Western colonization. If Christopher Columbus were to come to the Americas today, he would find 30 percent less biodiversity than in 1492. Today, another 23 to 24 percent of the region’s species are currently at risk of extinction, said Jake Rice, co-chair of the Americas assessment. That threatens nature’s land-based contributions to the peoples of the Americas, which is estimated to be worth more than $24 trillion per year. That’s equivalent to the region’s GDP, said Rice.
Expansion of agriculture, deforestation, resource extraction, pollution, and increasing urbanization are driving these declines. The people of the Americas consume three times as much of nature’s services as the global average, the assessment found. Changing this unsustainable rate of consumption will require fundamental changes in how we live, Rice said.
“We keep making choices to borrow from the future to live well today,” said Rice. “We don’t need to make those choices.”

Can You Spot These Hidden Animals?

Eastern Screech Owl. Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia.

Photograph by Graham McGeorge, National Geographic Your Shot

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We need to eat a more balanced diet, with less meat and less food waste, to take pressure off biodiversity, said Watson. We also need to choose to be more efficient in our water use, particularly in agriculture, and reduce our use of toxic chemicals. We have to drastically cut fossil-fuel use by using more mass transit, electric vehicles, and increasing energy efficiency, because climate change impacts biodiversity, the report notes. Without cuts to fossil fuel consumption, climate change will have as big an impact on biodiversity declines as land use change by 2050.

Public Involvement
“As citizens, we need to vote and lobby for political leaders and policies that support these choices,” said Emma Archer of South Africa, co-chair of the African assessment.
Africa is the last place on Earth with a wide range of large mammals, but some 190,000 square miles (500,000 square kilometers) of land is badly degraded by overexploitation. More pressure is coming as the number of people on the continent is expected to double, from 1.25 billion to 2.5 billion, by 2050. Today’s threats include poaching, unplanned urbanization, and agricultural expansion. By 2100, climate change could lead to the loss of more than half of African bird and mammal species, the report concluded.
At the same time, some of Africa’s threatened species have recovered or at least stabilized, thanks to efforts involving local communities. “The question is how to expand this, and how to enable all of us to live with nature,” said Archer.
It is clear that indigenous and local knowledge can be an invaluable asset in helping us learn to live with nature, said Watson. He added that biodiversity issues also need to receive much higher priority in policy making and development planning at every level. Cross-border collaboration is also essential, given that biodiversity challenges recognize no national boundaries.
“We know what we need to do,” he said. “There is no reason to not act now.”

Links

• Climate Change and Water Woes Drove ISIS Recruiting in Iraq
• How Color-Changing Animals Are Rebelling Against Climate Change
• Climate Change Is Suffocating Large Parts of the Ocean
• Human Emissions Made Ocean Heat Wave 53 Times More Likely
• Century-Long Glacier Study May Help Us Crack Climate Change
• What the World Would Look Like if All the Ice Melted

Burning Coal May Have Caused Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction

The Guardian - Dana Nuccitelli

New geological research from Utah suggests the end-Permian extinction was mainly caused by burning coal, ignited by magma

Fossil of a Galesaurus, a cynodont that lived during the Permian period. Photograph: Iziko Museum of Natural History

Earth has so far gone through five mass extinction events – scientists are worried we’re on course to trigger a sixth – and the deadliest one happened 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian geologic period. In this event, coined “the Great Dying,” over 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species went extinct. It took about 10 million years for life on Earth to recover from this catastrophic event.
Scientists have proposed a number of possible culprits responsible for this mass extinction, including an asteroid impact, mercury poisoning, a collapse of the ozone layer, and acid rain. Heavy volcanic activity in Siberia was suspected to play a key role in the end-Permian event.
Recently, geologist Dr Benjamin Burger identified a rock layer in Utah that he believed might have formed during the Permian and subsequent Triassic period that could shed light on the cause of the Great Dying.

Sheep Creek Valley, Utah. Photograph: Benjamin Burger

During the Permian, Earth’s continents were still combined as one Pangea, and modern day Utah was on the supercontinent’s west coast. Samples from the end-Permian have been collected from rock layers in Asia, near the volcanic eruptions, but Utah was on the other side of Pangaea. Burger’s samples could thus provide a unique perspective of what was happening on the other side of the world from the eruptions. Burger collected and analyzed samples from the rock layer, and documented the whole process in a fascinating video:


Dr Burger’s ‘Rocks of Utah’ episode documenting his investigation of the Permian-Triassic Boundary geologic samples. 

Earth turned into a toxic hellscape

Burger’s samples painted a grim picture of Earth’s environment at the end of the Permian period. A sharp drop in calcium carbonate levels indicated that the oceans had become acidic. A similar decline in organic content matched up with the immense loss of life in the oceans during this period. The presence of pyrite pointed to an anoxic ocean (without oxygen), meaning the oceans were effectively one massive dead zone.

Bacteria ate the oversupply of dead bodies, producing hydrogen sulfide gas, creating a toxic atmosphere. The hydrogen sulfide oxidized in the atmosphere to form sulfur dioxide, creating acid rain, which killed much of the plant life on Earth. Elevated barium levels in the samples had likely been carried up from the ocean depths by a massive release of methane.

The culprit: burning coal
Levels of various metals in the rock samples were critical in identifying the culprit of this mass extinction event. As in end-Permian samples collected from other locations around the world, Burger didn’t find the kinds of rare metals that are associated with asteroid impacts. There simply isn’t evidence that an asteroid struck at the right time to cause the Great Dying.
However, Burger did find high levels of mercury and lead in his samples, coinciding with the end of the Permian period. Mercury has also been identified in end-Permian samples from other sites. Lead and mercury aren’t associated with volcanic ash, but they are a byproduct of burning coal. Burger also identified a shift from heavier carbon-13 to lighter carbon-12; the latter results from burning fossil fuels.
The Permian was the end of the Carboniferous period, which means “coal-bearing.” Many large coal deposits were created in the Carboniferous, including in Asia. Previous research has shown that the Permian mass extinction event didn’t coincide with the start of the Siberian volcanic eruptions and lava flows, but rather 300,000 years later. That’s when the lava began to inject as sheets of magma underground, where Burger’s data suggests it ignited coal deposits.
The coal ignition triggered the series of events that led to Earth’s worst mass extinction. Its sulfur emissions created the acid rain that killed forests. Its carbon emissions acidified the oceans and warmed the planet, killing most marine life. The dead bodies fed bacteria that produced toxic hydrogen sulfide gas, which in turn killed off more species. The warming of the oceans produced a large methane release, which accelerated global warming faster yet. As Burger put it,

Things went from bad to worse, and you can now begin to understand how life nearly died out. Global warming, acid oceans, anoxia, not to mention a toxic atmosphere. We are lucky to be alive at all!

Eerie similarities to today

Scientists are observing many of the same signs of dangerously rapid climate change today. There’s more lighter carbon-12 in the atmosphere because the increase in atmospheric carbon levels is due entirely to humans burning fossil fuels. There are an increasing number of dead zones in the oceans. Burning coal was causing acid rain, although we largely solved that problem through Clean Air Acts, and in the US, a sulfur dioxide cap and trade system implemented by a Republican administration.

We’ve had less success in tackling carbon dioxide pollution, which continues to rise. As a result, the oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, and temperatures increasingly hot. Scientists today also worry about potentially large releases of methane from the ocean floor and Arctic.
These are some of the similarities between the climate change that nearly wiped out life on Earth 252 million years ago and the climate change today. Both appear to have largely been caused by burning coal. A 2011 study found that over the past 500 years, species are now going extinct at least as fast as they did during the five previous mass extinction events.
It’s enough to make you think; maybe coal isn’t so beautiful and clean after all.

Links

• The Terrifying Phenomenon That Is Pushing Species Towards Extinction
• 'A National Disgrace': Australia's Extinction Crisis Is Unfolding In Plain Sight
• This Is How Your World Could End
• Climate Change Could Wipe Out A Third Of Parasite Species, Study Finds
• When Life on Earth Was Nearly Extinguished
• ‘The Models Are Too Conservative’: Paleontologist Peter Ward on What Past Mass Extinctions Can Teach Us About Climate Change Today
• Burning Fossil Fuels Almost Ended All Life On Earth

Threatened Blue Carbon Ecosystems Store Carbon 40 Times Faster Than Forests

ABC Science - Joanna Khan

Mangroves accumulate carbon in their soils and can store it for thousands of years. (Pixabay)

Capturing carbon Coastal plants capture CO2 through photosynthesis and land-based carbon sources Carbon can be stored in the soil of blue carbon habitats for thousands of years When these habitats are damaged or destroyed the carbon can be released as CO2 back into the atmosphere

They can stink like fish and rotten eggs, breed swarms of mosquitos and lack the glamour of coral reefs. But mangroves, with other coastal habitats, are vitally important to our climate — and they're under threat.
In just the past decade, scientists have discovered that some of our underappreciated coastal habitats — called "blue carbon ecosystems" — play a huge role in tackling CO2 emissions.
But human activities such as burning fossil fuels and coastal development have already caused half of them to disappear.

"They're like the armpits of our coastline, but they are really important," said Deakin University marine ecologist Peter Macreadie.

What is blue carbon?

Blue carbon coastal ecosystems — such as mangroves, seagrass meadows and tidal wetlands — are named for their place at the boundary between land and sea, and their unmatched ability to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in the ground below.

This process is called carbon sequestration.
It was intense carbon sequestration by ancient forests and algae millions of years ago that helped create the very deposits of coal and oil we tap into for fossil fuels today.
Nearby on the ecology colour palette are the better-known green carbon systems of trees and forests. While important, they aren't nearly as efficient at storing carbon as their blue counterparts.
"We know that forests are pretty good at [carbon sequestration], but their carbon stores are bound to the lifetime of the trees, for only 100 or so years, and then it is released back into the atmosphere," Dr Macreadie said.
As well as being a temporary carbon store, trees can only soak up so much carbon before they become "saturated".

The oxygen-poor soil of seagrass meadows prevents microbes from decomposing the stored carbon and producing CO2. (Supplied: Michael Rule)

Blue carbon ecosystems, on the other hand, can store more carbon for longer — thousands of years — and at a far quicker rate.

"These blue carbon ecosystems store carbon around 40 times faster than green carbon ecosystems," Dr Macreadie said.

"So you need a lot more green carbon habitat to do the same amount of carbon offsetting."

Conservation gets weird
Some ecologists are worried that these ecosystems don't receive the attention they deserve and are now being lost faster than we can conserve them.
Dr Macreadie estimated that about half of the world's blue carbon ecosystems have already disappeared, thanks to human activities.
Seagrass meadows have shrunk at a rate of 1 per cent every year since the start of the 20th century.
In 2016 there was extensive die-back of mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, but it coincided with the mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, which received more attention.
To spur people into action to protect these "ugly duckling" habitats, Dr Macreadie and his team are getting creative with tea bags.
Around the world, citizen scientists have been burying tea bags in the soil of blue carbon ecosystems to find out how well the area stores carbon.

Blue carbon researchers have had to come up with unexpected ways to entice citizen scientists to their cause. (Deakin University: Donna Squire)

The tea leaves inside your everyday tea bag are carbon-based, which makes them a handy addition to the team's experimental toolkit.
If, after a few months of being buried in mud, the tea leaves are still there, then that might be a good spot for locking away carbon.
But if you dig the tea bags back up and the tea leaves have gone, it means the carbon has decomposed — indicating that area's not capable of carbon storage.
The project is uncovering how carbon storage ability varies even within blue carbon ecosystems.

Ticking carbon bombs: sinks become sources
Coastal development is the major danger to blue carbon habitats, and is now raising the issue that stored carbon will be emitted as CO2 back into the atmosphere.
"The really big threat is that the damaged ecosystems will release their ancient carbon stores," Dr Macreadie said.

"That's where you get the really big numbers."

An international team this week reported that a marine heatwave off Western Australia in 2010-11 that damaged seagrass meadows may have released of millions of tonnes of ancient carbon stores back into the atmosphere as CO2.
Oscar Serrano, a marine ecologist at Edith Cowan University involved in the research, said that the Shark Bay seagrass meadows accumulated around 144 million tonnes of carbon over the past 4,000 years.

Wading knee-deep in mud may not be glamorous, but scientists have now discovered how important habitats like mangroves are for mitigating climate change. (Deakin University: Simon Fox)

"We estimated that around 1,000 square kilometres of seagrass was lost due to the heatwave, which could have released between 2 and 9 million tonnes of CO2," Dr Serrano said.
It's a climate change double-whammy; losing carbon sequestration habitat while adding to our CO2 emissions at the same time.
However, scientists acknowledge that measuring CO2 emissions from blue carbon habitat loss is very challenging.
"We have to base our estimates on a number of assumptions, and the main uncertainty is the fate of the carbon stored in the system," Dr Serrano said.
"It's very hard to study mainly because of the time it takes for stored carbon to be converted back to CO2, and because it's such a complex system."
Dr Macreadie has been studying blue carbon ecosystems since the term was first coined around 9 years ago.
The field has grown exponentially since, but there's plenty more to discover about our coastal armpits, the benefits they provide and how to make sure they keep squirrelling away CO2.
"If we're going to keep burning fossil fuels, we need to find ways to pay for our carbon sins," he said.
"We need people to recognise the importance of these ecosystems and the weird things they do for us, and how they can form a sort of green infrastructure along our coasts."

Links

• Mangroves Protect Coastlines, Store Carbon – And Are Expanding With Climate Change
• 'They Died Of Thirst': Extreme Conditions Wipe Out Forest Over 1000 Kilometres
• 'Shocking images' reveal death of 10,000 hectares of mangroves across Northern Australia
• Can we manage coastal ecosystems to sequester more blue carbon?
• Shark Bay seagrass loss during ocean heatwave released up to 9m tonnes of CO2, scientists say

New Interactive Climate Change Map Shows Global Similarities

Interesting Engineering - Shelby Rogers

Tehran and Salt Lake City aren't that different when one looks at their climate change impact, according to scientists.

ClimateEx Interactive | University of Cincinatti

A new interactive map shows how the world is more connected than ever before -- specifically with regard to climate change. The ClimateEx map project from researchers with the University of Cincinnati not only tells users about an area's climate history; it can pair up a city with its "climate twin" across the globe.
In order to create the map, geography professor Tomasz Stepinski and his team had to gather over 50 years worth of meteorological data across 50,000 international weather databases throughout the world.
"The map demonstrates climate change over time but also climate diversity. The concept is powerful and can inspire a lot of research," Stepinski said.
Stepinski is a massive fan of statistics. Another famous project of his involved a highly-detailed map of racial diversity found in every neighborhood in the United States. However, he's long been a fan of climate research and wanted to combine his two passions. Originally from Poland, Stepinski spent a large part of his career looking for how statistics could best be represented visually.
"I've lived in Houston, Tucson and Cincinnati. Climatically speaking, they couldn't be farther apart," he said.
Stepinski teamed up with fellow Polish researcher Pawel Netzel and developed this visual way for climatologists and other scientists to study patterns and compare climates over time in nearly any location around the world.

ClimateEx Interactive | University of Cincinatti

ClimateEx also details which parts of the globe have been most affected by global warming and other climate issues. While the poles and surrounding areas show distinct changes, the tropics do as well. Stepinski noted that it's due to monthly rainfall.
"When people think about climate change, they think about temperature: global warming," he said. "But climate has many components, including precipitation. People often consider temperature and precipitation separately. But our mathematical model includes both."

ClimateEx Interactive | University of Cincinatti

Netzel said even beyond using it for climate research, the map is a fun tool for anyone looking for their ideal climates elsewhere in the world.

"Using ClimateEx, it is easy to get answers to questions such as where in the world do we have a climate similar to Houston's? Where can I find a place with a climate as pleasant as Florida's?"

"ClimateEx is mostly an educational tool," Netzel said. "Using ClimateEx, it is easy to get answers to questions such as where in the world do we have a climate similar to Houston's? Where can I find a place with a climate as pleasant as Florida's?"
This also gives users a tool in finding places that could be more greatly affected by larger weather events like hurricanes, monsoons, flooding, severe storms, snow, or droughts given the area's history and trajectory.
"ClimateEx enables an easy search for locations where climate change may lead to the occurrence of such extreme phenomena in the future," he said. "The user simply indicates the location where tornadoes are presently frequent and ClimateEx finds all locations where in 50 years the climate will be conducive to tornadoes."
Netzel also qualified what type of use the ClimateEx map would be perfect for.
"It can support strategic, long-term planning and decision-making on the future development of urbanized space," he said. "It helps to prepare for emerging threats such as increasing the frequency or appearance of extreme weather phenomena. Knowledge about the possibility of hazards will give city planners time to prepare appropriate response plans."
In a statement, Stepinski was direct about his feelings for those who don't worry about climate change and write off global warming as just a 'phase.'
"If you were looking at climate change at a scale of a million years, you wouldn't worry too much," Stepinski said. "But if you see dramatic changes on the order of a few decades, it's a big problem. Personally I'm not happy there are people who seem to disregard this as not much of a problem. It is a problem."
And as for Cincinnati's climate twin? Stepinski said it's Vicenza, Italy -- not a bad place to be if the team ever wanted a vacation.
"You will see that both Cincinnati's and Vicenza's climates have a similar progression of weather conditions throughout the year," he said. "So a person would experience the passing of the seasons in the same way in both places."

Links

• ClimateEx Interactive
• World's future climate change hotspots mapped
• New Interactive Map Shows Climate Change Everywhere In World
• Our changing climate
• Where climate change will hit NZ hardest revealed in new interactive map

Losing Nemo? Wider Effects Of Mass Great Barrier Reef Bleaching Emerge

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Bleaching in the world's reefs over the past couple of years is immediately evident from the stark images of corals shedding their myriad colours for a ghostly white.
While as much as half the corals of the Great Barrier Reef died during the marine heatwaves of 2016 and 2017, researchers are only now beginning to assess the toll on the many species that rely on corals for food and shelter.

Researchers at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef are studying the impacts of coral bleaching on fish and anemones that depend on them. Photo: University of Wollongong 

"A lot of the attention is on the corals," Marian Wong, a marine biologist from the University of Wollongong, said. "The public's perception is that the fish are mobile enough to just swim away."
In fact, clownfish - made famous by the Finding Nemo film  - and other species such as coral goby fish "are just terrible swimmers, designed to sit in their little spot their whole lives", she said.

Abundance of coral goby fish has dropped away markedly around Lizard Island. Photo: Catheline Froehlich

Dr Wong is part of a team of researchers who have made use of the Australian Museum's research station on Lizard Island to examine how sea anemones and fish have fared since the mass bleaching events. Where baseline data is available, early signs - at least from the far-north Queensland site - aren't pretty.

Around Lizard Island, there were about 13 species of coral gobies, a social fish often found in groups.
Now there is only a "very, very low abundance", Dr Wong said. "It's almost a complete location extinction of gobies there."
Anna Scott, a researcher from the Southern Cross University, studies sea anemones.

Clownfish are among the species hammered by the coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 and 2017. Photo: University of Wollongong

These species, related to corals, also bleach when stressed by high temperatures, expelling the algae that provide them their vivid colours and much of their energy.
When anemones die, anemone fish - including clownfish - lose the protection of the stinging tentacles and become easy prey for other fish.

Marian Wong, a marine biologist at the University of Wollongong, at Lizard Island.Photo: University of Wollongong

A visit last month to Lizard Island revealed "the first signs of recovery" in anemones, Dr Scott said. Since the area had not been mapped before, the recent work will serve as a baseline for future comparisons.
"There's a decline in numbers [of anemones from the bleaching] but we don't know the scale of it," she said.
While many changes may be subtle, others are obvious even to the casual observer.
The recent visit was notable for the absence of beautiful butterfly fish - which typically swim in pairs. "I don't think I saw a single one," Dr Wong said.
Whether coral, anemones and the fish that depend on them return in numbers resembling their more recent abundance likely hinges on "whether or not they are given time [to recover] without these warming events", Dr Wong said.
"These will keep happening if we continue, business as usual, with our use of fossil fuels."

Links

• World's Coral Reefs Face New Peril From Beneath Within Decades
• Great Barrier Reef In 'Deep Trouble' As Climate, Other Threats Mount: Official
• 'Wasteful Stunt': Turnbull Government Accused Of Doing Too Little To Save Reef
• Great Barrier Reef: Rising Temperatures Turning Green Sea Turtles Female
• Great Barrier Reef Will Be Dead By 2100, Says David Attenborough's Blue Planet II
• Why Climate Change Is A Key Issue In The Queensland Election
• Warming Limit Of 1.2 Degrees Needed To Save Great Barrier Reef: Expert Panel
• While Corals Die Along The Great Barrier Reef, Humans Struggle To Adjust
• The Great Barrier Reef Isn’t Listed As ‘In Danger’ – But It’s Still In Big Trouble
• World's Coral Reefs Face New Peril From Beneath Within Decades
• Global Warming’s Toll On Coral Reefs: As If They’re ‘Ravaged By War’
• Can Corals Survive Climate Change?
• Coral Bleaching: Researchers Struggle To Find Anywhere In Pacific Ocean Untouched
• Countries With Coral Reefs Must Do More On Climate Change – UNESCO
• 50 Reefs: World-First Global Plan Says Only 10 Pc Of Coral Reefs Can Be Saved From Extinction
• Enough PR Spin: We Need A Real Plan For The Reef That Includes Ditching Coal
• Great Barrier Reef: Most Coral Now Dead North Of Port Douglas Off Far North Queensland, Scientists Say
• NASA Begins Study Of Australia's Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef: Government Must Choose Which Parts To Save, Says Expert
• Global Coral Bleaching Continues For a Record Third Year

Earth Hour: Millions Participate In Global Switch-Off To Raise Climate Change Awareness

The Independent - Josh Gabbatiss

Annual event sees global blackout as environmentalists hope to 'send a powerful message that we must act now' to save planet

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House were among the first landmarks around the world to dim their lights for Earth Hour AFP

Millions of people in countries around the world switched off their lights for Earth Hour to raise awareness about climate change and other environmental issues.
Since beginning in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour has spread to more than 180 countries, with tens of millions of people joining in – from turning off the porch lights to letting the Sydney Opera House go dark.
The 11th Earth Hour event focused on support for biodiversity – specifically forests, oceans and wildlife conservation.
Australia was the first nation to turn its lights off at 8.30pm local time, with other countries following suit as the sun set across the globe.
Key landmarks participating in the annual event included the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Pyramids of Egypt and New York's Empire State Building.
In Jordan, the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature arranged 11,440 candles on a hilltop in the capital of Amman, establishing a Guinness World Record for the largest candle mosaic.
Last year nearly nine million people took part in the event across the UK, where the lights went off in Tower Bridge, Brighton Pier and 400 other landmarks across the country.
The initiative, which is managed by WWF, is meant to “inspire millions to take action for our world”.
Earth Hour's 60 minutes are "an opportunity to adopt a shifting of the consumption culture, and behaviour change towards sustainability", said Indian Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan.

Marina Bay Sands hotel and resort with the lights switched off during the Earth Hour environmental campaign in Singapore (Getty Images)

Though switching off lights can result in a slight dip in electricity usage, the action is supposed to be largely symbolic.
However, besides the global blackout, the Earth Hour campaign has had some tangible achievements over the years.
These have included a ban on plastics in the Galapagos Islands and planting new forests in Uganda
To mark Earth Hour this year, WWF asked the public to make a "promise for the planet" – a small step in their own lives to help reduce their environmental footprint – such as refusing plastic cutlery or carrying a reusable coffee cup.

Filmmakers use 100-year-old photograph to map effect on climate change on a glacier

While these promises are small individually, WWF stated that “millions of people taking these actions together will have a massive, powerful impact”.
"This Earth Hour, millions of people around the UK are sending a powerful message that we must act now on climate change and pollution to save our planet,” said Tanya Steele, chief executive of WWF.
The launch of the event was accompanied by a report that warned of a surge in plastic use in the coming years across the UK.

Ancient Temple of Parthenon atop Acropolis hill in the dark during Earth Hour (Getty Images)

While the focus of Earth Hour is largely on individual measures that can be taken to help the planet, campaigners also called for strong action from Government and businesses to tackle issues like plastic waste.
“We can’t do it solely on people’s goodwill,” said Gareth Redmond-King, head of climate and energy at WWF UK.

Links

• Earth Hour 2018
• Earth Hour: Lights off to preserve the planet's environment
• Lights Around the World Go Dark for Earth Hour
• 'It's more than just turning off the lights': what else to do for Earth Hour
• Photos: Dubai's Burj Khalifa goes dark for Earth Hour
• Watch: UAE switches off to save planet Earth
• Sydney goes dark as Earth Hour climate campaign kicks off

Paul Ehrlich: 'Collapse Of Civilisation Is A Near Certainty Within Decades'

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Fifty years after the publication of his controversial book The Population Bomb, biologist Paul Ehrlich warns overpopulation and overconsumption are driving us over the edge

The toxification of the planet with synthetic chemicals may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change, says Ehrlich. Photograph: Linh Pham/Getty Images

A shattering collapse of civilisation is a “near certainty” in the next few decades due to humanity’s continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich.
In May, it will be 50 years since the eminent biologist published his most famous and controversial book, The Population Bomb. But Ehrlich remains as outspoken as ever.

Prof Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University.
Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo 

The world’s optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today, he argues, and there is an increasing toxification of the entire planet by synthetic chemicals that may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change.
Ehrlich also says an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen”.
The Population Bomb, written with his wife Anne Ehrlich in 1968, predicted “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” in the 1970s – a fate that was avoided by the green revolution in intensive agriculture.

Many details and timings of events were wrong, Paul Ehrlich acknowledges today, but he says the book was correct overall.
“Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation over the edge: billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people.”

Make modern contraception and back-up abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities

Ehrlich has been at Stanford University since 1959 and is also president of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, which works “to reduce the threat of a shattering collapse of civilisation”.
“It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems,” he says. “As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell’.”
It is the combination of high population and high consumption by the rich that is destroying the natural world, he says. Research published by Ehrlich and colleagues in 2017 concluded that this is driving a sixth mass extinction of biodiversity, upon which civilisation depends for clean air, water and food.

High consumption by the rich is destroying the natural world, says Ehrlich. Photograph: Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

The solutions are tough, he says. “To start, make modern contraception and back-up abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities with men.
“I hope that would lead to a low enough total fertility rate that the needed shrinkage of population would follow. [But] it will take a very long time to humanely reduce total population to a size that is sustainable.”

It will take a very long time to humanely reduce total population to a size that is sustainable

He estimates an optimum global population size at roughly 1.5 to two billion, “But the longer humanity pursues business as usual, the smaller the sustainable society is likely to prove to be. We’re continuously harvesting the low-hanging fruit, for example by driving fisheries stocks to extinction.”
Ehrlich is also concerned about chemical pollution, which has already reached the most remote corners of the globe. “The evidence we have is that toxics reduce the intelligence of children, and members of the first heavily influenced generation are now adults.”
He treats this risk with characteristic dark humour: “The first empirical evidence we are dumbing down Homo sapiens were the Republican debates in the US 2016 presidential elections – and the resultant kakistocracy. On the other hand, toxification may solve the population problem, since sperm counts are plunging.”

Plastic pollution found in the most remote places on the planet show nowhere is safe from human impact. Photograph: Conor McDonnell 

Reflecting five decades after the publication of The Population Bomb (which he wanted to be titled Population, Resources, and Environment), he says: “No scientist would hold exactly the same views after a half century of further experience, but Anne and I are still proud of our book.” It helped start a worldwide debate on the impact of rising population that continues today, he says.
The book’s strength, Ehrlich says, is that it was short, direct and basically correct. “Its weaknesses were not enough on overconsumption and equity issues. It needed more on women’s rights, and explicit countering of racism – which I’ve spent much of my career and activism trying to counter.
“Too many rich people in the world is a major threat to the human future, and cultural and genetic diversity are great human resources.”
Accusations that the book lent support to racist attitudes to population control still hurt today, Ehrlich says. “Having been a co-inventor of the sit-in to desegregate restaurants in Lawrence, Kansas in the 1950s and having published books and articles on the biological ridiculousness of racism, those accusations continue to annoy me.”
But, he says: “You can’t let the possibility that ignorant people will interpret your ideas as racist keep you from discussing critical issues honestly.”

More of Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s reflections on their book are published in The Population Bomb Revisited.

Links

• The Population Bomb Revisited (pdf)
• The Population Bomb
• Earth's sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn
• What is biodiversity and why does it matter to us?
• Empty half the Earth of its humans. It's the only way to save the planet
• Europe's most densely populated square kilometres – mapped
• Graveyard living: inside the 'cemetery slums' of Manila
• The dysfunctional megacity: why Dhaka is bursting at the sewers