The warning is a followup message, 15 years after a group of 1,500 scientists issued a similar warning in 1992 and has now picked up some viral movement on social media. Twitter is showing the hashtag #ScientistsWarningToHumanity as trending.
The warning campaign was originally started by William Ripple from Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, who alongside student Christopher Wolf conducted a revised analysis of all of the environmental concerns raised in the last 25 years. Let’s just say their findings weren’t promising.
Some of the highlighted problems flagged by Ripple were ocean dead zones, biodiversity on the decline, unsustainable marine fisheries, to name a few – all on top of climate change.
“The trends are alarming, and they speak for themselves,” he said.
“The scientists around the world are very concerned about the state of the world, the environmental situation and climate change. So this allows them to have a collective voice.”
Professor Eileen Crist who coauthored the report also echoed the same message.
“We are in the throes of a mass extinction event that is anthropogenic,” she said. “If we lose 50 to 75 per cent of the species on the planet in this century – which is what scientists are telling us what will occur if we continue to operate as business-as-usual. If this happens, this can not be fixed.”
