Scientists warn of Earth's declining environmental health

Thanks to Jane Marie Law

From Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - We are using the Earth to improve our lives, but our children and grandchildren will be forced to live in a worsening environment that endangers their existence, more than 1,300 scientists warn.

In a report to be released Wednesday, a team of international experts concluded that the world is at risk on a variety of fronts, including a skyrocketing runoff of nutrient-rich farm waste that's killing swaths of the world's oceans, a massive wave of animal and plant extinctions and a planet that's growing warmer.

But it's not hopeless, they said.

From the Daily Kos

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is today releasing a 219-page report which says that future generations - our children, their children and their children - face broad-scale environmental crises that could jeopardize their survival. But the 1,360 scientists who put the study together remain, like me, hopeful.

The report from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment can be found here.