last updated 17.10.2006

" King of kings' Bible - 2 Esdras ...6:22 (ii) And suddenly shall the sown places appear unsown, the full storehouses shall suddenly be found empty (of food, including the seas from over-fishing)
6:23 (iii) And the trumpet (6th or 7th - Rev. 9-10) shall give a sound, which when every man heareth, they shall be suddenly afraid.
6:24 (iv) At that time shall friends fight one against another like enemies, and the Earth shall stand in fear with those that dwell therein, the springs of the fountains shall stand still, and in three "hours" they shall not run.
6:25 Whosoever remaineth from all these that I have told thee shall escape, and see My Salvation, and the End of your World. - The "Signs" of the "End" Times

 

Oct 16, 2006
Booming populations threaten East Asian coasts
"Growing populations and booming economies are threatening fragile coastal areas in East Asia, and the region's coral reefs could face total collapse within 20 years, according to a new United Nations study."

October 12, 2006
Grain stockpiles at lowest for 25 years
"The world’s stockpiles of wheat are at their lowest level in more than a quarter century, according to the US Department of Agriculture, which on Thursdayslashed its forecasts for global wheat and corn production.... "

04 October 2006
The century of drought
One third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100, say climate experts in the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming

04 October 2006
Get ready for freak weather, world's polluters told
The world's top polluting nations were told on Wednesday to prepare for decades of weather turmoil, even if they act now to curb emissions and pursue green energy sources.

September 30, 2006
India Digs Deeper, but Wells Are Drying Up
The country is running through its groundwater so fast that scarcity could threaten whole regions like this one, drive people off the land and ultimately stunt the country’s ability to farm and feed its people.

"...Indian law has virtually no restrictions on who can pump groundwater, how much and for what purpose. Anyone, it seems, can — and does — extract water as long as it is under his or her patch of land. That could apply to homeowner, farmer or industry.

Electric pumps have accelerated the problem, enabling farmers and others to squeeze out far more groundwater than they had been able to draw by hand for hundreds of years. ..."

August 16, 2006
World water demand 'will double'
WORLD demand for water will double by 2050, with a third of the globe's population already facing shortages of the precious resource, an international expert has warned.

Aug 11, 2006
Pacific 'Dead Zone' Said To Exceed Fears
Scientists say the oxygen-starved "dead zone" along the Pacific Coast that is causing massive crab and fish die-offs is worse than initially thought.

Aug. 5, 2006
Global Warming Could Slam Food Supply
Scientists say global warming will very likely make the food on your dinner table quite a bit pricier. 

August 02, 2006
Heat wave destroys vegetable crop; warning of things to come from climate change

October 06, 2006
Global warming to cause massive drought over next 100 years, say climatologists
"...Extreme drought, which makes modern agriculture virtually impossible, is seen by a new study from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research as possibly affecting about one-third of the planet in the next century. These predictions may actually be an underestimation, said the climate scientists who released the results of the study..."

August 07, 2006
Oceans in Crisis But U.S. Slow to Act
"..., "We're talking about 30 percent of the world's land surface becoming essentially uninhabitable in terms of agricultural production in the space of a few decades…."

The state of the oceans is not good and "is getting worse," said Leon Panetta, a former California Congressman and cochair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative.

Pollution, overfishing and coastal runoff are damaging the nation's oceans and coasts, and massive dead zones plague waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay and off the coast of Oregon.

July 20, 2006
Earth facing 'catastrophic' loss of species
The Earth is on the brink of "major biodiversity crisis" fuelled by the steady destruction of ecosystems, a group of the world's most distinguished scientists and policy experts warn today.

July 14, 2006
Expert: Biofuel Crisis Looms
The surging demand for corn, sugar cane and vegetable oils to make Earth-friendlier biofuels is pitting hungry cars against hungry people, and trouble’s brewing, says sustainable development pioneer Lester Brown.
"...In effect what we have are 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and two billion people who want to survive,..."

July 5, 2006
Growing Acidity of Oceans May Kill Corals
The escalating level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the world's oceans more acidic, government and independent scientists say. They warn that, by the end of the century, the trend could decimate coral reefs and creatures that underpin the sea's food web.

"...It's another example of when you put gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you have these results none of us would have predicted."..."

June 5, 2006
Bulldozing the Bottom of the Sea
"...It is a wonderfully clear expression, used by a U. S. biologist about the impact of bottom trawling. "Imagine using a bulldozer to catch songbirds for food — that's what it's like," marine biologist Sylvia Earle says. "After a trawler has gone by, it looks like a superhighway, it's just flat. Nobody's home. A few fish may swim in and out but the residents, those that occupy the substrate, they're just smothered, they're crushed. It's like paving them over."..."

May 17, 2006
Global Food Supply Near the Breaking Point

November 10, 2005
A hunger eating up the world
China's insatiable demand for proteins as well as oil is turning Brazil into the takeaway for the workforce of the world. In the second part of our series, we reveal how the soya trade is creating a gold rush which is deforesting the Amazon

June 30, 2005
One in six countries facing food shortage
One in six countries in the world face food shortages this year because of severe droughts that could become semi-permanent under climate change, UN scientists warned yesterday...

April 01, 2005
Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil
"...Today the food system is even more reliant on cheap crude oil. Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource, which is nearing its depletion phase."

March 30, 2005
Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up'
"The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure...."

"... "An estimated 90% of the total weight of the ocean's large predators - tuna, swordfish and sharks - has disappeared in recent years. An estimated 12% of bird species, 25% of mammals and more than 30% of all amphibians are threatened with extinction within the next century. Some of them are threatened by invaders."..."

9 February 2005
Apocalypse now: how mankind is sleepwalking to the end of the Earth

August 26, 2004
China's farmers cannot feed hungry cities
Beijing - China's leaders have raised the alarm about their country's ability to feed itself as rapid development sucks land, water and people from the food-producing countryside into increasingly large and hungry cities. After a steady fall in grain harvests, the world's most populous nation recently became a net importer of food for the first time in its history, raising domestic political concerns and driving up international prices of wheat, rice and soya

April 4, 2004
World's Marine Life Is Getting Sicker
"...For years, apparent increases in illness among marine creatures, from whales to coral, have left marine scientists with the uneasy suspicion that the seas are increasingly plagued by disease. Now, US researchers have uncovered the first good evidence that they are right...."

January 8, 2004
An Unnatural Disaster: Global Warming to Kill Off 1 Million Species
Climate change over the next 50 years is expected to drive a quarter of land animals and plants into extinction, according to the first comprehensive study into the effect of higher temperatures on the natural world.

September 6, 2003
Europe's harvest crisis

"The prolonged heatwave has devastated crops across Europe, leaving some countries facing their worst harvests since the end of the second world war..."

"..."The heatwave came at a time when world food supplies were already at their most precarious ever. The amount of grain produced for each person on earth is now less than at any time in more than three decades."..."

2003
Study: Oceans near U.S. in crisis
"...Bringing the oceans' ecosystems back from the edge of collapse -- one recent study found that 90 percent of the world's big fish have disappeared -- requires dramatic, controversial and expensive efforts to limit fishing, coastal development and runoff from cities and farms, according to the Pew Oceans Commission. Its report is the product of a three-year, $5.5 million study...."

Sunday July 7, 2002
Earth 'will expire by 2050'
"...Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week...."

"...Experts say that seas will become emptied of fish while forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are completely destroyed and freshwater supplies become scarce and polluted.

The report offers a vivid warning that either people curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the onus on scientists to locate another planet that can sustain human life. Since this is unlikely to happen, the only option is to cut consumption now. ..."

April 10, 2002
In Mexico, Greed Kills Fish by the Seaful
"...Greed and corruption are draining the gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortés. It is not dead yet, but it is exhausted. American and Japanese ships were the first to exploit it. Now fleets of Mexican fishermen, mostly unlicensed and ungoverned, are taking whatever they can, as fast as they can, for American and Asian markets. Every important species of fish in the sea is in sharp decline, fishermen and marine scientists say. Overfishing is a global problem. People are taking marine life faster than it can reproduce. The world's catch peaked at 86 million tons in
1989, up fourfold in 50 years. But many governments, including the United States, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and China, kept on pouring subsidies into commercial fishing fleets to keep them afloat. Crucial fisheries have collapsed worldwide..."

March 28, 2002
Writer Deplores Scary Science
"It could have ended all plant life on this continent," geneticist David Suzuki says in the book. "The implications of this case are nothing short of terrifying."

January 7, 2001
How the King of Fish is being farmed to death
"Fish farming has delivered cheap salmon to the consumer - but at a high environmental price. In this in-depth investigation, Stuart Millar talks to farmers, ecologists and scientists about the growing crisis "

"...Perhaps the cruellest irony of the exponential growth in fish farming is that it has come close to driving wild fish, the very creature it was designed to save, to the brink of extinction. Over the past 10 years, wild salmon stocks have declined to all-time lows, but in the north-west Highlands, centre of the aquaculture industry, stocks have been devastated. The cause: infestation of sea lice on wild fish caused by the proximity of caged salmon...."