Brazil (2019) - Drone Footage showing the damage created by the de broken dam

Source: Common Dreams

'We Have Entered the Age of Environmental Breakdown': Report Details World on Edge of Runaway Collapse

A new report from U.K. researchers is being praised as "absolutely brilliant," "essential reading for policymakers," and "a clarion wake-up call to the world."

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

A resident of Orange, Texas walks through his flooded neighborhood on September 5, 2017 in Orange, Texas. Almost a week after Hurricane Harvey, some neighborhoods remained flooded. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Warning that the world is on a path toward "environmental breakdown" that will likely trigger "runaway collapse" of social and economic systems in the vein of the 2008 global financial crisis, a new report out Tuesday calls for major shifts in understanding the scale and pace of environmental change, the implications of it, and the need for a transformational response.

"Human-induced environmental change is occurring at an unprecedented scale and pace and the window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic outcomes in societies around the world is rapidly closing." —IPPR report

The report—titled This Is a Crisis: Facing Up to the Age of Environmental Breakdown (pdf)—from the U.K.-based progressive think tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), declares that "mainstream political and policy debates have failed to recognize that human impacts on the environment have reached a critical stage, potentially eroding the conditions upon which socioeconomic stability is possible."

"Human-induced environmental change is occurring at an unprecedented scale and pace and the window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic outcomes in societies around the world is rapidly closing," the report advises. "These outcomes include economic instability, large-scale involuntary migration, conflict, famine and the potential collapse of social, and economic systems. The historical disregard of environmental considerations in most areas of policy has been a catastrophic mistake."

We need to face up to the reality of environmental breakdown #ThisIsACrisis and a transformational response is required.

Find out more https://t.co/PYDJDtQc5g pic.twitter.com/SgCvURveJP

— IPPR (@IPPR) February 12, 2019

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