Yesterday I was writing about a series of dams that have collapsed in Brazil. We need to remember that there are two imminent threats that we are facing in the natural world.
- The world is warming. This is going to make life far harder for our children
- We are loosing much of the wilderness on the planet. Unfortunately we rely on this to survive in the long-term
We need to cut carbon emissions dramatically, we know as the human race that if we do not cut emissions dramatically and very fast, our planet will go through horrific change from the loss of the ice caps (and the resulting sea level rise) to the desertificion of large parts of the planet – some of this previously being rainforest.
If we cannot halt the loss of areas such as rainforests, the problem becomes even larger as we destroy one of our largest carbon sinks.
In the west, we have a responsibility to not only cut our own emissions to net zero in the space of a few decades, we must also help developing countries grow their own economies and increase the standard of living for their citizens without destroying what remains of the ecosystems that still exist.