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- 2001 was the second warmest year on record
- Bush administration acknowledged the existence of global warming and its injurious effect on the environment (U.S. Department of State, 2002).
- Humankind's use of resources-its global footprint-is 20% greater than the earth can generate in a year's time (Hall, 2002).
- According to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, roughly half of the earth's original forests have been felled, and another 30% have been degraded or fragmented (Worldwatch Institute, 2002), representing critical habitat loss.
- Continued degradation of forests, deserts, mangrove swamps, wetlands, and coral reefs-all critical habitats for countless species-leads to the extinction of a species every 20 minutes (Wilson, 2002).
- Fisheries have suffered a decline from overharvesting: The Grand Banks cod fishery is all but depleted (Brower & Chapple, 1995), and a ban was recently placed on harvesting rockfish along North America's west coast (Martin, 2002).
- Human impact is compounded by the rate at which population continues to increase. The world now has 6.2 billion inhabitants, more than twice the population than in 1950, with a forecast of 11 billion by the year 2050 (Worldwatch Institute, 2002). Financial resources are unequally distributed, with the northern hemisphere's wealth gained largely at the expense of countries in the southern hemisphere (Worldwatch Institute, 2002). Unabated poverty, compounded by drought, the scarcity of fresh water supplies, and degradation of farmland due to overgrazing and pesticide use, threatens the world population's ability to meet subsistence needs. Hopelessness is compounded by the pandemic of the HIV virus, which continues to ravage sub-Saharan Africa and recently has been reported on the tipping point of a major outbreak in China (Worldwatch Institute, 2002). With the majority of population growth taking place in the world's developing nations (India and China alone account for one third of total population growth per annum) and citizenry who aspire to the same level of affluence as those living in post-industrial nations, the continued degradation of natural resources and loss of life on earth appears inevitable without ameliorative intervention.
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