The Journey to Planet Champion

Several years ago my husband and I were sailing on the Bay of Fundy near St. Andrews for a week, and I had brough 6 months worth of National Geographic magazines to wile away the time. As I lounged in the warm sun and lazily began reading the magazines, I was struck by the masses of scientific evidence that pointed to the destruction of Earth’s eco systems, Earth’s climate systems and Earth’s bio diversity, all at the hands of humans! Reading 6 National Geographics back to back will do that to you! I started underlining articles and making notes in the margins, then when I got home transcribed all this new information to my computer. Following are some of the more shocking statistics that grabbed my attention. Please note that this information is from over 5 years ago:

• An estimated 8.8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year
• A quarter of all mammals are threatened with extinction
• The perennial Arctic ice cap – the sea ice that persists through winter and summer – is wasting away. Over the past 50 years it has shrunk by more than a million square miles. Sea levels are rising ever faster, by accelerating melt from Greenland and Antarctica. This causes flooding of low lying cities and towns.
• In ten minutes more than a half million tons of CO2 are added to the atmosphere
• In 1970 the Today show announced the new Earth Day with this quote “our Mother Earth is rotting with the residue of our good life. Our oceans are dying, our air is poisoned”.
• In 1970 the planet was home to 3.7 billion people; 200 million cars and trucks, oil consumption around 45 million barrels a day; 36 million tons of pork and 14 million tons of poultry, and 65 million tons of seafood.
• In 2020 8 billion people; 1.5 billion vehicles; oil consumption of 90 million barrels a day; 72 million tons of pork; 60 million tons of poultry; and 190 million tons of seafood, both wild and aquaculture.
• Carbon dioxide hangs around in the atmosphere for centuries – Earth will keep warming until we shut down emissions completely.
• If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, global sea levels would rise by 20 feet.
• To keep temps under the 2 degree threshold global emissions would have to drop by half over the next 20 years, and zero by 2070.
• The global populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians have shrunk on average by 60 % since 1970. There are 3 billion fewer birds in North America than 50 years ago. The biomass of flying insects has dropped by 76% in 3 decades.
• People are doing better than they were in 1970, but not so for most other creatures. We’ve appropriated ever more of the Earth’s resources for ourselves.
• Humans have altered ¾ of the ice free land on the planet, and 85% of the Earth’s wetlands have been lost.
• Agriculture accounts for more than 2/3 of groundwater extraction worldwide. Entire ecosystems become jeopardized as water is increasingly pumped from aquifers that can’t be recharged fast enough.