As if climate change weren't peril enough, a group of
international scientists finds that other compounding factors -
population growth, energy use, habitat destruction - are
hastening the day when the planet faces a biological breakdown.
It's a dire warning that world leaders can't ignore. The
findings may sound like more of the same: Climate change is
raising the world's temperatures and producing wholesale shifts
in ocean levels, vegetation and wildlife. But the panel of 22
researchers from five countries have expanded the lens. Other
human-caused changes are afoot. A global population of 7 billion
is set to rise past 9 billion by mid-century. At the same time,
humans are taking up more space, building cities and expanding
farms from the present 43 percent of the world's surface toward
the 50 percent mark. It keeps going: fossil fuels spew more
carbon dioxide into the skies, which drip acid into the oceans,
diminishing underwater life. It's all attributable to human
activity. It's a depressing scenario, bu