The Earth Summit Can't Save the Earth

Antonio Ribeiro/Gamma-Rapho / Getty Images

First the bad news: the planet is in peril. On June 6, an international team of scientists published a study in the journal Nature warning that because of human activity, the planet is reaching a potentially catastrophic tipping point. Humans have already radically altered 43% of the earth's surface from its natural state, far greater than the smaller changes that helped trigger the last great planetary shift during the ice ages 11,000 years ago. If development keeps up at the current pace, humans will have transformed half the planet by 2025. After that, there may be no going...

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