Which is a threat to environment

Sea levels are rising and oceans are becoming warmer. Longer, more intense droughts threaten crops, wildlife and freshwater supplies. From polar bears in the Arctic to marine turtles off the coast of Africa, our planet’s diversity of life is at risk from the changing climate. Climate change poses a fundamental threat to the places, species and people’s livelihoods WWF works to protect. To adequately address this crisis we must urgently reduce carbon pollution and prepare for the consequences of global warming, which we are already experiencing. WWF works to: • advance policies to fight climate change • engage with businesses to reduce carbon emissions • help people and nature adapt to a changing climate A new report by an international body of scientists exposes the sheer gravity of the climate crisis and the increasingly severe climate impacts facing people and nature. To drive home the impacts on nature, WWF created a new version that incorporates plants and animals to highlight how climate change affects generations across all species on the planet. Humans and wild animals face new challenges for survival because of climate change. More frequent and intense drought, storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and warming oceans can directly harm animals, destroy the places they live, and wreak havoc on people’s livelihoods and communities. U.S. Cities at Risk As climate change worsens, dangerous weather events are becoming more frequent or severe. People in ...

The measure of human demands on Earth’s natural resources is known as our ecological footprint. Currently, we use the equivalent of 1.5 Earths to produce all the renewable resources we use. As the human population grows, the challenge of reducing our footprint becomes more urgent. Learn more about the impact of the ecological footprint

Six months since taking office, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's major environmental and reform initiatives are in peril because of an uncooperative Congress. Why it matters: Lula came to power in part by promising to reverse Driving the news: Brazil's Senate is discussing a bill already approved by the lower house that • The bill, if approved, would dismiss the 285 Indigenous land claims that have long been pending — and it would bar any new claims. Activists say that could make it easier for illegal miners, loggers and cattle ranchers to encroach on the territories. • That "would open the floodgates to runaway deforestation and climate chaos," Christian Poirier, program director of Amazon Watch, an NGO, tells • Some Congress members Other Lula initiatives that Congress has either slowed or killed in the last month include a proposed reform that changes the bidding process for sanitation companies and that Lula says would increase water access and improve sewage infrastructure in more municipalities. Debates start in the Senate today. The big picture: Lula, a leftist, came to power on New Year's Day after a slim victory over former President Jair Bolsonaro, an ultra-conservative. • In Congress, Bolsonaro’s Partido Liberal has the largest voting bloc in the lower house and the second-largest in the Senate. What they're saying: "I think from what we've seen so far there will continue to be a major governability challenge for Lula in the future," says • "I don...

Illustration: Charlotte Ager/The Guardian Clearing the US prairies: ‘On a par with tropical deforestation’ “It’s hidden destruction. We’re still losing grasslands in the US at a rate of half a million acres a year or more.” Tyler Lark, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, knows what he is talking about. Lark and a team of researchers used satellite data to map the expansion and abandonment of land across the US and discovered that 4m hectares (10m acres) had been destroyed between 2008 and 2016. Large swathes of the United States’ great prairies continue to be converted into cropland, according to the research, to make way for soya bean, corn and wheat farming. Changes in land and sea use has been identified as the main driver of “unprecedented” biodiversity and ecosystem change over the past 50 years. ​​ North America’s grasslands – often referred to as prairies – are a case in point. In the US, about “Our findings demonstrate a pervasive pattern of encroachment into areas that are increasingly marginal for production but highly significant for wildlife,” Lark and his team Boggier areas of land, or those with uneven terrain, were traditionally left as grassland, but in the past few decades, this marginal land has also been converted. In the US, 88% of cropland expansion takes place on grassland, and much of this is happening in the Great Plains – known as According to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity there are 1.For terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, l...

While the climate crisis has many factors that play a role in the exacerbation of the environment, there are some that warrant more attention than others. Here are some of the biggest environmental problems of our lifetime, from deforestation and biodiversity loss to food waste and fast fashion. — 1. Global Warming From Fossil Fuels As of May 2023, CO2 PPM (parts per million) is at 420.00 and the global temperature rise is 1.15C compared to pre-industrial levels. The last time carbon dioxide levels on our planet were as high as today was causing catastrophic events all over the world – from Australia and the US experiencing some of the most devastating bushfire seasons ever recorded, locusts swarming across parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, decimating crops, and a cientists are constantly warning that the planet has crossed a series of tipping points that could have catastrophic consequences, such as advancing permafrost melt in Arctic regions, the sixth mass extinction , and increasing JOIN THE MOVEMENT TODAY The climate crisis is causing tropical storms and other weather events such as hurricanes, heatwaves and flooding to be more intense and frequent than seen before. However, even if all greenhouse gas emissions were halted immediately, global temperatures would continue to rise in the coming years. That is why it is absolutely imperative that we start now to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, invest in renewable energy sources, and phase our fossil ...

Wind farms and massive arrays of solar panels are cropping up across public and private landscapes both in the United States and abroad as users increasingly turn to “green energy” as their preferred flavor of electricity. President Joe Biden, in fact, has directed the Interior Department to identify suitable places to host 20 gigawatts of new energy from sun, wind or geothermal resources by 2024 as part of a sweeping effort to move away from a carbon-based economy and electrical grid. But how green is green? Although countries are feverishly looking to install wind and solar farms to wean themselves off carbon-based, or so-called “dirty” energy, few countries, operators and the industry itself have yet to fully tackle the long-term consequences of how to dispose of these systems, which have their own environmental hazards like toxic metals, oil, fiberglass and other material. A briefing paper released by the • United States, 10 million tons. • Germany, 3 million tons. • China, 20 million tons. • Japan, 7.5 million tons. • India, 7.5 million tons. Solar arrays have a life cycle of about 30 years, but the rapid adoption of solar in the United States and elsewhere has the problem of disposal creeping up in the rearview mirror — faster rather than later. Green waste growth In 2019, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the United States surpassed 2 million solar installations, just three years after it hit the milestone of 1 million installations. The paper po...