By SCHRODINGER'S CAT
Updated: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:31:08 UTC

We are destroying our planet......and we all seem powerless to do anything about it.

Rainforest once covered 14% of the Earth's surface, and now covers less than 6%. According to the United Nations figures, an area of forest the size of Greece is lost every year.

http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign/FactsFigures/QandA/index.asp http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/about_forests/deforestation/

The rate of deforestation has decreased in recent years, down from 16 million hectares a year to 13 million.....but it is still an alarming rate that will see all the worlds rainforests, in particular, gone within 50 years ( There's an estimated 625 million hectares of rain forest ).

What makes this even worse, as if it were not bad enough, is that rainforest absorbs about 15% of the world's CO2. So the destruction of the rain forests is compounding global warming. In turn, the increase in CO2 alters the climate and causes drought in rain forest areas.

We simply can't go on like this. The ecosystem will collapse. To compound the woes even further, we are daily crapping 625 tons worth of top soil per hectare down the drain.....

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/march06/soil.erosion.threat.ssl.html

And we are losing more species per day than has occurred since the dinosaurs were wiped out. Fifty species a day go down the pan.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Largest_mass_extinction_in_65_million_years_underway,_scientists_say

We all know this is not sustainable, yet the political will to do anything about it just does not seem to be there. Maybe we'll sort it out tomorrow. Alas...maybe tomorrow the world will sort us out.

Sometimes I think mere 'facts' just bounce off people.....so here's something a bit more dramatic. An excellent composition of music and video that says it all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTV5Pcs5Q8U

All very emotive. Makes one think for 5 or 6 minutes. After which one gets on with living one's unsustainable lifestyle.

TAGGED: EARTH SCIENCES, ENVIRONMENT