Current affairs are important for a scientific journal too. Last November, 15,372 scientists in all the disciplines, including numerous Nobel prize winners, signed the appeal published on BioScience entitled World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice. The document, probably the longest ever signed by scientists, emphasises the fact that the future of humanity is hanging by a thread.
This is the second version of the document published in 1992 and signed by 1,700 scientists who, even then, were forecasting the impacts of climate change, deforestation, an unfair distribution of access to drinking water and of demographic growth on health and wellbeing, putting “hopes for the future of human society at severe risk”.
According to the figures disclosed by the scientists who have signed the new appeal, since 1992, emissions of CO2 have increased by 62%, while global temperature has risen by 29%; vertebrate life forms have diminished by 29%; the amount of drinking water per capita has fallen by 26%; the “dead areas” of our oceans have increased by 75%; over 121.46 million hectares of forest have been lost.
Plants, animals, insects, fish and other natural species produce oxygen, clean the water and pollinate. It has been calculated, perhaps a little haphazardly, that these “natural services” have a value of between 125 and 145 trillion dollars a year; but they are subject to constant pressure due to the increase in population (two billion people since 1992, equating to 35%).
The way things stand, the only positive trends are those related to the replenishment of the ozone layer, which protects us from ultraviolet rays. This is thanks to the Montreal Protocol signed in 1987, and the growing use of renewable energies.

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