blue planet seas of life worksheet answers

David Attenborough: What Can We Do?Īll hope is not lost however, David Attenborough asserts. The security and stability of the Holocene era- our “Garden of Eden,” as Attenborough calls it, will be lost. Scientists predict that the sixth mass extinction will be well underway at this point, causing irreversible damage to the planet. The planet will be four degrees Celsius warmer, rendering large parts of the Earth uninhabitable and leaving millions of people homeless. You might also like: The Climate Crisis is Threatening Global Food Security 2100s Pollinating insects will disappear and the weather will become more unpredictable.

Global food production will enter into a crisis as soils become exhausted by overuse. You might also like: Improving the Resilience of Coral Reefs 2080s This will cause fish populations to crash, which will affect millions of people who rely on the ocean for their livelihoods. You might also like: Methane Emissions in the Arctic Could Amplify Global Warming 2050sĪs oceans continue to heat and become more acidic, coral reefs around the world will bleach and die. In the North, frozen permafrost soils will thaw, releasing methane into the atmosphere.

You might also like: The Amazon is at Risk of Drying Out 2040s Without the white ice caps, less of the sun’s energy will be reflected back into space, which will accelerate global warming. Not only will this decimate the biodiversity in the rainforest, but it will also alter the global water cycle.Īdditionally, the Arctic will start experiencing ice-free summers. If deforestation in the Amazon rainforest continues, it will degrade to a point where it can no longer produce enough moisture, transforming into a dry savanna. The Arctic, one of the coldest and remote places on Earth, has experienced summer sea ice reducing by 40% in 40 years.ĭavid Attenborough makes horrifying predictions for the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s, 2080s and 2100s: 2030s Humans cut down up to 15 billion trees per year this is just one facet of the planet’s degradation thanks to humans, which has resulted in 30% of fish stocks being fished to critical levels and freshwater populations declining by over 80%. Domestic animals require vast swathes of land and half of the fertile land on the planet is now farmland. The rest- “from mice to whales”- make up just 4%. A further 60% of animals are those that are raised for us to eat. Humans account for over one-third of the weight of mammals on Earth. Since the 1950s, animal populations have more than halved, while domestic birds’ populations have skyrocketed 70% of the mass of the birds on the planet are domestic birds- mostly chickens. Here are some of the key takeaways and predictions from A Life on Our Planet.ĭavid Attenborough maps out how humanity’s wanton destruction of nature will render the planet totally degraded and barren, uninhabitable for millions of people and bringing biodiversity populations crashing. It also makes grim predictions for the future should humanity continue on its current path, predictions that Earth.Org has covered extensively. The film traces his 60-year career, outlining how steeply the health of the planet has declined in his lifetime. In 2020, world-renowned naturalist David Attenborough released a new film – “A Life on Our Planet” – which he calls his “witness statement” for the environment.

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Blue planet seas of life worksheet answers