EXAMPLES
OF THE WORLD CRISES
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CRISES OF LIFE ON
EARTH
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Lions
– population down 90% in 20 years. Large ocean fish – down
90% since 1950. Fresh water fish – down 50% since 1987. All
land animals down 28% since 1970 (1)
The
rate of species extinction is estimated to be 1000 greater than
normal.
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CRISES OF INEQUALITY
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The richest 85 people in the world own as much
wealth as the poorest HALF of the world (2)
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CRISES OF THE
ECONOMY
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Total
world debt is US$230 trillion, which is about $30,000 for every
man woman and child on the planet.
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CRISES IN HEALTH
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Cancer
will affect 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women in the US, (1 in 3 of all
people in NZ) and the number of new cases of cancer is set to
nearly double by the year 2050
(3)
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CRISES OF MENTAL
SUFFERING
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On
average, one person dies from suicide every 40 seconds somewhere
in the world. Someone attempts suicide every 2 seconds.
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CRISES IN HUMAN
RESOURCES
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A
new study
(4) warns
that global industrial civilisation is doomed to catastrophic
collapse because of the overstretched demand for resources.
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CRISES IN MORALITY
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The
tobacco firm Philip Morris is suing the governments of Australia
and Uruguay for trying to discourage people from smoking.
In
the US, 21 cities have passed legislation to forbid feeding
homeless people.
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CRISES OF CLIMATE
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The
world is passing tipping points for abrupt, catastrophic and
irreversible changes to the global climate according to a report
released in December 2013 (5).
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CRISES IN THE OCEANS
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The
global population of phytoplankton has fallen about 40% since
1950. Half of the world's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton,
and they are the bottom of the ocean's food chain – all ocean
life depends on them.
Mass
die-offs are occurring off the west coast of the USA of seabirds,
fish, starfish, sea lions, walruses, whales . . .
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CRISES IN HUMAN
FERTILITY
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Studies
show that human sperm count has fallen around 50% since 1950.
One study revealed that only one in four men have "good"
sperm (6).
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CRISES IN HUMAN
BRUTALITY
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The
ex UN chief Ban Ki-Moon said the Syrian government forces were
“responsible for the arbitrary detention and torture of
children for their perceived association with the opposition,
and for using children as human shields”. Witnesses have told
UN investigators that some of the treatment children were
subject to included “beatings with metal cables, whips and
metal batons; electric shocks including to the genitals; the
ripping out of fingernails and toenails; sexual violence;
exposure to the torture of relatives”; etc (7).
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CRISES IN SOIL
FERTILITY
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Britain
has only 100 harvests left in its farm soil as scientists warn
of growing agricultural crisis (8).
Elsewhere cropland is being lost to desertification and
pollution at a rate of 30 hectares per minute – over 30 times
the historical rate (9).
But human population continues to rise rapidly.
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References:
(1)
Guardian Newspaper UK.
(2)
Oxfam
(3) Based
on statistics collected by the Surveillance Epidemiology and End
Results (SEER) program at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
(4)
Goddard Space Flight Centre, NASA
(5)
US National Academy of Sciences
(6)
Niels
Jørgensen, associate professor at Rigshospital, Copenhagen, at
European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference.
(7)
UN Human Development Report
(8)
Professor Nigel Dunnett, of the University of Sheffield, in
'Farmer's Weekly' October 2014
(9)
UN – UNCCD brochure
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