More than 15,000 scientists around the world have issued a global warning that there needs to be change in order to save Earth.
It comes 25 years after the first notice in 1992 when a mere 1,500 scientists issued a similar warning.
William Ripple of Oregon State University's College of Forestry, who started the campaign, said that he came across the 1992 warning last February, and noticed that this year happened to mark the 25th anniversary.With his graduate student, Christopher Wolf, he decided to revisit the concerns raised then, and collect global data for different variables to show trends over the past 25 years.
He found:
- A decline in freshwater availability.
- Unsustainable marine fisheries.
- Ocean dead zones.
- Forest losses.
- Dwindling biodiversity.
- Climate change.
- Population growth.
The only one positive result, however: a rapid decline in ozone depletion.
After writing the viewpoint article, which was accepted for publication in the journal BioScience, he decided to see if he could once again collect signatures.The new cautioning, which gained popularity on Twitter with #ScientistsWarningToHumanity — garnered more than 15,000 signatures.
527 are from Canada, ranking eighth among 184 countries who participated in the campaign.
There is rising evidence that Earth has entered the sixth mass extinction event brought on by humans.