50 million environmental refugees' warning

United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS)

As Ranks of “Environmental Refugees” Swell Worldwide,
Calls Grow for Better Definition, Recognition, Support

Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee’.

2005http://www.alternet.org/story/23413/
In his Pulitzer-prize winning book "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in "Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed," Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? From the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland, "Collapse" traces the fundamental patterns of catastrophe.

Ernest Partridge
Co-Editor "The Crisis Papers"
May 10, 2005
From: http://www.crisispapers.org/essays-p/last-chance.htm

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.
- Elizabeth Colbert (2005)

Humanity is facing a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. The final depletion of petroleum reserves is likely within this century. Without this energy source, and with no alternative sources in place, the Earth could probably not support half of the present population of six billion souls.

The state of the world? It is on the brink of disaster
An authoritative study of the biological relationships vital to maintaining life has found disturbing evidence of man-made degradation. Steve Connor reports
30 March 2005

Global warming: scientists reveal timetable
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Correspondent
03 February 2005
Global warming: scientists reveal timetable
Archbishop tells Church to help save the planet with green policies
A detailed timetable of the destruction and distress that global warming is likely to cause the world was unveiled yesterday.
It pulls together for the first time the projected impacts on ecosystems and wildlife, food production, water resources and economies across the earth, for given rises in global temperature expected during the next hundred years.