Tag: climate change

Humanity has only 18 months left to take decisive political steps to avert the catastrophic effects of climate change, according to a report Wednesday by the BBC.

by Michael Bastach   The United Nations is out with another alarming report, claiming that one million species, more than ever before, are threatened with imminent extinction if drastic actions aren’t taken. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s similar warning to one given by the head of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) nearly four decades ago. In 1982, UNEP executive director Mostafa Tolba warned U.N. delegates from 100 countries that “on almost every front, there has been a marked deterioration in the quality of our shared environment.” Tolba continued, warning that unless governments acted immediately, “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.” Of course, like today, governments weren’t doing enough to stave off the ecological equivalent of nuclear war. But while the 1982 dire prediction made headlines, it’s failure to come true did not. Bjorn Lomborg, environmental policy expert and author, highlighted the 1982 Reuters article on Twitter as hysteria over the new U.N. report swept social media. Lomborg, no skeptic of global warming, pointed out the UNEP was wrong in the 1980s as today’s apocalyptic predictions are likely wrong as well. And here, from 1982, where the…