This is probably the best indicator of how out of sync humans are with this planet. We've distanced ourselves so much from the ecosystem that supports us that we no longer see the impact of our everyday actions on the planet. Sadly, I don't see this trend slowing down any time in the near future. Specially not with a single focused environmental policy of reducing global warming. The environmental challenges are multi-faceted and are being overshadowed by global warming discourse.One index of human impact is the extinction of species, now estimated to be at about the same rate as it was 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth.
Yes, and the current mass extinction, while human caused to a large extent, predates the industrial revolution by many millenia. All the megafauna of Europe and most of the Americas were hunted out of existence before there were even cities. If we're looking for positives, the total forestland in the world has been increasing over the last decade or so, although rain forest is still decreasing, if memory serves. Global warming is no doubt the issue of the day, but there's way more to conservation than greenhouse gasses. We could see the extinction in the wild of the black rhino before the end of the term of the next president of the US, if nothing is done to stop the trade in rhino horns. We just passed the hundredth anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, of which there were perhaps 5 billion in colonial times. Wanton disregard for wildlife breaks my heart, but it's easy to say that in the comfort of a first world existence.