The human impact on this planet has been huge in a relatively short period of time. These pictures are not about data, but about better picturing this impact through visual examples. While viewing these, keep in mind that our current extinction rate is 1000x the background level and that wild animal populations have shrunk an average of 52% in 40 years.
1. A surfer riding through debris
Photograph: Zak Noyle
Plastic has permeated our oceans, with over 270 million metric tons of in the ocean there is potentially more plastic than fish in the oceans right now. This becomes even more believable when we consider that up to 85% of fisheries are being overexploited.
2. Deforestation in British Columbia, Canada
Photograph: Garth Lentz
Deforestation is a major problem, and we now have only half as many forests as we did in 1950. We are simultaneously putting out vastly more carbon into the atmosphere while depleting the planet’s capacity to absorb it.
3. Animal agriculture
Photograph: Peter Beltra
Animal agriculture, as a whole, requires tremendous amounts of resources and is a leader in environmental degradation, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (more than all transportation combined). Clearing land for animal agriculture, and the food it requires, accounts for 91% of amazon deforestation.
4. Kowloon City in Hong Kong
Hong Kong is still one of the most densely populated cities on Earth with 6,650 people per square kilometer. When Kowloon City still stood, it housed 33,000 people in a single city block.
5. Mexico City, urban sprawl
Photograph: Pablo Lopez Luz
Mexico City is also one of the most populated cities in the world, and its expansion has wiped out natural ecosystems for many kilometers. Together, this has led to very bad air quality, a continuing concern for Mexican health authorities.
6. Crop “desert” in China, no room for nature
Huge swaths of China, and indeed many developed and developing countries, is covered in fields containing only one kind of plant. Where fields and forests once stood, now stands neat rows of single species, far more sensitive to environmental fluctuations than a diverse ecosystem.
7. Deforestation in Brazil
Brazilian rainforest being clear-cut for cattle raising, photograph: Daniel Beltra
8. Plastic moves up the food chain
In both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems: plastic moves up. The tiny and not so tiny pieces are eaten by animals which are themselves then eaten: it moves up the food chain. With all the microplastics in our oceans and water: do we really think this isn’t reaching us?
9. Cheap fossil energy won’t last forever, and it certainly wasn’t free
Depleting oil fields are yet another symptom of ecological overshoot, as seen at the Kern River Oil Field, California.
10. The Yangtze River turning red
Whether due to microorganisms or industrial pollution: this is certainly a bad sign for the ecosystem. There is reason to believe that when enough small ecosystems collapse, the global biosphere will become destabilized and mass extinction will intensify.
Source : exposingtruth.com
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