Earth needs ‘users guide’ to protect it from people
* Expert claims human activities pushing world into danger zone
OSLO: A new users’ guide is needed to help protect the Earth from dangerous changes such as global warming and extinctions of animals and plants caused by humans, scientists said on Thursday.
A group of 28 experts suggested nine key areas, such as freshwater use, chemical pollutants or changes in land use, where governments could define limits to ensure a “safe operating space for humanity”. “Today we are clearly driving development in the world blindfolded,” Johan Rockstrom, leader of the study and director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, said. “We are not considering the risks that there are deep holes we can drive into,” he said. The call, for setting “planetary boundaries”, was published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature. Read More »Earth needs ‘users guide’ to protect it from people