No Peace for the Wicked:

I take a week off and there's a bumper crop of cheery articles on the Beeb website alone. Let's start with the oldest and, arguably, most worrying one:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global ecosystems 'face collapse':
Tuesday, 24 October 2006, 06:58 GMT 07:58 UK

Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned.

The group's biannual Living Planet Report said the natural world was being degraded 'at a rate unprecedented in human history'.

Terrestrial species had declined by 31% between 1970-2003, the findings showed.

It warned that if demand continued at the current rate, two planets would be needed to meet global demand by 2050.

The biodiversity loss was a result of resources being consumed faster than the planet could replace them, the authors said.

They added that if the world's population shared the UK's lifestyle, three planets would be needed to support their needs.


The World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report makes interesting, yet notably grim, reading. It is based around two indications of the state of the planet:

Biodiversity index
This provides a trend-based analysis of, well, how successful we are at making species extinct. Data for 695 terrestrial, 344 freshwater and 274 marine species were analyzed:

• Terrestrial species declined by 31 per cent
• Freshwater species by 28 per cent
• Marine species by 27 per cent

Resource demands
The second indicator is our ecological footprint. This measures the demands we place on the planet's natural resources.

• Between 1961 and 2003, our resource requirements have tripled.
• Between 1961 and 2003, our CO2 production has increased by 900%
• In 2003, we exceeded the resource capacity of the planet by 25%... this is up from 21% in 2001