A new study says that human activities are indeed altering the environment — by killing off swaths of it.
Keith Getter / Getty Images
“ conceive of being a aqualung diver and leaving your airwave tank behind you on a dive , ” anew studysuggests .
Or maybe a skydiver without a chute , a mountain climber without a rope — the list of metaphors goes on .

Keith Getter / Getty Images
Either direction , you ’re screwed . As is , according to the research from the University of Minnesota and McGill University , our planet .
“ Human bodily process are driving the 6th mass extinction in the history of liveliness on Earth , despite the fact that variety of life heighten many benefits citizenry reap from nature , such as Mrs. Henry Wood from forests , farm animal forage from grasslands , and Pisces from oceans and flow , ” Forest Isbell , the paper ’s jumper lead generator , said . “ It would be wise to put much more in keep up biodiversity . ”
A quarter of mammals and over one - tenth of birds are presently threatened with extinguishing .
The endangerment rates of these creatures is “ similar at present to those of the five orbicular aggregated - extinction events of the preceding 500 million class that probably resulted from meteorite wallop , monolithic volcanism and other cataclysmal power , ” the account reads .
We , in and of ourselves , are a cataclysmic force .
The skilful news ? The report ’s author think it ’s not too belated to pull ourselves from the verge . One of the key fruit , they wrote , lies in a drastic change to human diets and farming technique .
Another crucial footprint is increased conservation investiture , since “ the note value human being derive from biodiversity is 10 time what every body politic in the human beings put together drop on conservation today . ”
This report , ironically enough , was published on the same day Donald Trump retire the United States from the historical Paris Climate Agreement — despite the fact that legal age inevery single state(7 out of 10 Americans overall ) supported the peck .
Pres . Trump says withdraw from the Paris understanding “ protect the United States from next encroachment on the United States ’ sovereignty”pic.twitter.com/1RqQCKSgBn
— ABC News Politics ( @ABCPolitics)June 1 , 2017
Now it seems the labor of pulling our planet back from the edge might fall to the country ’s other main polluter — China and India — both of which are already on lead toexceed their Paris agreement commitments .
Next , seewhy rising ocean levels will disproportionately regard the U.S .. Then , learnAntarctica is turn unripe .