Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970 according to a report issued on October 30, 2018 by the World Wildlife Foundation.
Plummeting numbers of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish around the world are an urgent sign that nature needs life support. Our Living Planet Report 2018 shows population sizes of wildlife decreased by 60% globally between 1970 and 2014.
For the last 20 years, scientists from ZSL, WWF and other organisations, have been monitoring changes in the populations of thousands of animal species around the world. Sadly, they’ve concluded that the variety of life on Earth and wildlife populations is disappearing fast.
“We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. “If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done.”
“This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is,” he said. “This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is our life-support system.”
On September 26, 2018, the UN released a report that concluded climate change is happening faster that models predicted, and we reaching the point of no return.
As governments prepare to meet later this year for the next round of climate talks, Secretary-General António Guterres today underscored the need to speed up action on an issue that is “the absolute priority” for the United Nations.
Climate change is the defining issue of our time – and we are at a defining moment,” the Secretary-General said at the Informal Leaders Dialogue on Climate Change, held on the margins of the annual high-level debate of the General Assembly.
“[…] we have many priorities in the UN – peace and security, human rights, and development – but I would say that this is the absolute priority.”
Mr. Guterres recalled that when world leaders signed the Paris Agreement on Climate Change three years ago, they pledged to keep global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to work to keep the increase as close as possible to 1.5 degrees.
These objectives were agreed, he noted, as the “bare minimum” to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
“The commitment was universal – but we are nowhere close to where we need to be to meet these minimum targets,” he stated, adding that a UN study found that the commitments made so far by Parties to the Paris Agreement represent just one-third of what is needed.
“We need to do more and we need to do it quicker: we need more ambition and accelerated action by 2020.”
On November 23, 2018, a congressionally mandated report on the impacts of climate change. It is believed the White House released it on Black Friday in an attempt to bury it. The report summary:
Climate change creates new risks and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities in communities across the United States, presenting growing challenges to human health and safety, quality of life, and the rate of economic growth.
Impacts from climate change on extreme weather and climate-related events, air quality, and the transmission of disease through insects and pests, food, and water increasingly threaten the health and well-being of the American people, particularly populations that are already vulnerable.
* Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, damaging everything from human health to infrastructure and agricultural production, according to a government report.
* The report issued a dire warning at odds with the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuels agenda.
* The White House dismissed the congressionally mandated reported as inaccurate.
“With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century – more than the current gross domestic product (GDP) of many U.S. states,” reports the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II. “While President Trump continues to ignore the threat of climate change, his own administration is sounding the alarm,” said Abigail Dillen, president of environmental group Earthjustice. “This report underscores what we are already seeing firsthand: climate change is real, it’s happening here, and it’s happening now.”
On November 27, 2018, the UN’s emissions gap report concluded that despite pledges of industrial countries CO2 emissions rose in 2017.
To meet the goals of the Paris climate pact, the study says it’s crucial that global emissions peak by 2020.
But the analysis says that this is now not likely even by 2030.
As the NCEI’s Deke Arndt has 
