Mankind is pushing the Earth to the brink of habitability and will end the world as we know it if such behavior continues for the next several decades.
According to Reuters, a new study published in the journal Science - not a movie trailer - paints a bleak picture for the future of Earth given the way humans are currently treating it. The international team of 18 scientists continued the work of a 2009 study on "planetary boundaries" for human inhabitation.
Of those boundaries there are nine and four have already been breached. The researchers said in a statement accompanying the study his has placed "humanity in a danger zone."
"I don't think we've broken the planet but we are creating a much more difficult world," study co-author Sarah Cornell, of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told Reuters.
Elena Bennett, a co-author on the study from McGill University's School of the Environment, said in a press release one of the most crucial boundaries was the nitrogen-phosphorus cycle.
"People depend on food, and food production depends on clean water," she said. "This new data shows that our ability both to produce sufficient food in the future and to have clean water to drink and to swim in are at risk.
"About half a million residents of the city of Toledo found out that their tap water had been contaminated with a toxin called microcystin last summer. And in 2007 the Quebec government declared that more than 75 lakes were affected by toxins produced by blue-green algae... We will see more lakes closed, will have to pay more to clean our water, and we will face temporary situations where our water is not cleanable or drinkable more and more frequently."
Many climate studies have already suggested extreme weather events are a result of manmade climate change. And the researchers of this study say extreme weather can contribute to breaching these "planetary boundaries."
The study's lead author, Will Steffen, of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Australian National University, told Reuters: "Transgressing a boundary increases the risk that human activities could inadvertently drive the Earth System into a much less hospitable state."
