I was doubting whether this deserved a diary, but given the apparent little attention it has received, I would hate to see it buried at the bottom of the open/world thread.

I just came across this story in the Guardian

I took their headline word-for-word.

I checked BBC and CNN and found it neither on their front pages nor their Science & Nature and Science & Space pages respectively. Maybe because the report will actually be presented Wednesday (still tomorrow for us in NY) in London:

The report, prepared in Washington under the supervision of a board chaired by Robert Watson, the British-born chief scientist at the World Bank and a former scientific adviser to the White House, will be launched today at the Royal Society in London.

This prediction is not exactly made by one or a few ‘tree-huggers’.  Neither is it a conspiracy; how would you involve that many individuals from such different cultures:

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries – some of them world leaders in their fields – today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.

The report has a number of very bleak observations:

In 1997, a team of biologists and economists tried to put a value on the “business services” provided by nature – the free pollination of crops, the air conditioning provided by wild plants, the recycling of nutrients by the oceans. They came up with an estimate of $33 trillion, almost twice the global gross national product for that year. But after what today’s report, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, calls “an unprecedented period of spending Earth’s natural bounty” it was time to check the accounts.

“That is what this assessment has done, and it is a sobering statement with much more red than black on the balance sheet,” the scientists warn. “In many cases, it is literally a matter of living on borrowed time. By using up supplies of fresh groundwater faster than they can be recharged, for example, we are depleting assets at the expense of our children.”

Please follow the link and read the article.  A very sobering story.  When will we wake up? Kyoto-protocol anyone?

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