Syukuro Manabe, a climate modeller at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "the political system is not motivated to worry about the future".

"Decision-makers should learn from and scale up grass-roots action and knowledge in areas like energy, food, water and natural resources," the panel declared.

by 2030, if nothing changes, mankind would need two planets to sustain its lifestyle

Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific adviser, said: "We all need to agree that there's a crisis of understanding, that we're removing the planet's biodiverse resources at a rate which is as fast if not faster than the world's last great extinction."

50 countries are already experiencing "moderate to severe water stress on a year-round basis"

27 countries are "importing" more than half the water they consume - in the form of water used to produce goods from wheat to cotton - including the UK, Switzerland, Austria, Norway and the Netherlands.

A person's footprint ranges vastly across the globe, from eight or more "global hectares" (20 acres or more) for the biggest consumers in the United Arab Emirates, the US, Kuwait and Denmark, to half a hectare in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Afghanistan and Malawi.

The global average consumption was 2.7 hectares a person, compared with a notional sustainable capacity of 2.1 hectares.

the ethics of dealing with scientific uncertainty may be the most pressing ethical problem facing the human race

the Incredible Edible program has improved community relations, and reduced crime by an incrementally higher amount every single year since it first started

Today the Highlands of Scotland are one of the most deforested lands in the world. Perhaps equally disturbing, the Scots of today, according to Hand, have virtually no conception of a forest, of its ecological vastness and beauty.

environmental problems can be understood as equally serious across generations even while the problems worsen.

If you drag heavy fishnets across the ocean floor and pulverize an entire ecosystem, ending thousands of years of dynamic evolution and depriving future generations of a healthy ocean, it’s called free enterprise.  But if, like Tim DeChristopher, you disrupt an auction of public land to oil and gas companies, it’s called a crime and you get two years in jail.   

Tearing apart wildlife habitat to make a profit and doing the same at a workplace are just considered the price of doing business. Clearcutting a forest and clearcutting a labor force are two sides of the same coin. 

The desperate effort to grow the economy to solve our economic woes is what keeps Timothy Geithner at the helm of the Treasury and is what stalls the regulation of greenhouse gasses.  It’s why we are told we must sacrifice environmental quality for pipelines and why young men and women are sacrificed to protect access to oil, the lubricant for an acquisitive economic engine.

we have built an all-encompassing economic engine that requires unending growth.  A contraction of even a percent or two is a crisis, and yet we are embedded in ecosystems that are reaching or have reached their limits.

Like so much else these days, the crash, as it happens, will not be suffered in equal measure by all of us.  The one percenters will be atop the hill, while the 99% will be in the flood lands below swimming for their lives, clinging to debris, or drowning.

Degrading the planet’s operating systems to bolster the bottom line is foolish and reckless.  It hurts us all.  No less important, it’s unfair.  The 1% profit, while the rest of us cough and cope. After Occupy Wall Street, isn’t it time for Occupy Earth?

how to build communities not centered around de facto mandatory automobile ownership

how many fish used to swim in streams and the oceans, how many birds used to fly in the skies, how many bigger animals used to be in our forests

Chevron had claimed that Ecuador was violating the terms of a 1997 trade pact with the US.

According to a report by Sweden's Umeå International School of Public Health more than 30bn gallons of toxic wastes and crude oil had been discharged into the land and waterways of Ecuador's Amazon basin - or "Oriente". This compares to the 10.8m gallons spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 in Alaska or 205m gallons spilt in BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster. The report claims there are at least two big oil spills per week in the area. Printable version Send to a friend Share Clip Contact us larger | smaller Environment Pollution · Oil · Energy Business Oil · Commodities World news Ecuador More news Related 7 Jun 2010 Exxon Mobil argues against knee-jerk reaction to Gulf oil spill 31 Aug 2010 Greenland's prime minister lambasts Greenpeace for raiding Arctic oil rig 7 May 2010 Chevron wins access to film-maker's Amazon pollution footage 1 Dec 2010 A climate journey - The Andes: Ecuador's rainforests

half of the country's power is driven by water

The study calculates that the Mau Forest's value to the electricity sector is $131.6m.

This blaze of lurid colour helps to make tourism one of Kenya's biggest earners, and the study reckons this industry receives $65 million in benefits from the forest.

Further services provided by the forest include an estimated $89million in storing carbon, $98million in controlling soil erosion and $21million in support for fisheries.

Kenya adopted a new constitution that declares in Article 42, "Every person has the right to a clean and healthy environment, which includes the right - a) to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations through legislative and other measures."

Article 69 of the new constitution also holds the state responsible for maintaining tree cover over at least ten percent of the nation’s land; for encouraging public participation in protecting and managing the environment; protecting indigenous knowledge of biodiversity; and establishing systems of environmental impact assessment.