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07 Jun 2012: Environmental Tipping Point
Is Nearing, International Study Says

The rapid warming of the planet, a soaring human population, the steady loss of biodiversity, over-exploitation of energy resources, and the degradation of the world’s oceans are driving the world toward an ecological tipping point, according to a new study in Nature. Twenty-two scientists from

On the Road Back to Rio,
Green Direction Has Been Lost

In 1992, an historic summit in Rio de Janeiro produced groundbreaking treaties and hopes that pressing environmental issues would be addressed. But on the eve of the Rio+20 conference, Fred Pearce writes, there is little to suggest any substantive action will be taken.
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five nations compared the major changes taking place today with previous ecological shifts — such as the end of the last Ice Age 14,000 to 18,000 years ago — that triggered mass extinctions of some species, expansions of others, and the creation of new global ecosystems. The paper said that while there is still considerable uncertainty as to whether the world is now approaching such a “state shift,” many signs point to a future of ecological upheaval. “Given all the pressures we are putting on the world, if we do nothing different, I believe we are looking at a time scale of a century or even a few decades for a tipping point to arrive,” lead author Anthony Barnosky, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an interview. The paper appeared in a special issue of Nature prepared for the upcoming Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable development.

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South African photojournalist Adam Welz documents the harrowing relocation of six white rhinos to a region that has lost all its rhinos to poaching. View the gallery.

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