Our impact on the planet is unsustainable. That is beyond questioning. Climate Change is real. That is beyond any intelligent questioning What remains is what we do next – can we take actions to halt or even reverse this destabilisation and destruction? The good news is we can; the bad news is we are starting very late and we need to win a lot more people over to doing the right thing in a short space of time.  

• Most of the world, and the rich biodiversity it contains. is under threat as a direct result of our actions. Climate Change and Global Warming melt the ice caps and cause droughts, storms and floods. However our damage is often even more direct. We destroy rainforests in the amazon to clear land for cattle ranching and animal foodstuffs https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/challenges/soya/
• Our demand for palm oil puts many species including orang utan under threat https://www.ran.org/issue/forests/  The global oil and gas industry directly pollutes the planet with its extraction activities and its products accelerate global warming
• Yet this destruction of our environment doesn’t just happen on the other side of the world. It is happening now across the UK. The 2023 State of Nature report https://stateofnature.org.uk/ highlights the decline in biodiversity in Britain. This authoritative report is supported by over a dozen UK conservation organisations. 
• Centuries of unsustainable farming and development as well as direct persecution has had a massive impact. Since 1970 there has been a loss of an average of 19% of UK species, currently a further 16% (1 in 6) are under threat of extinction.
• The way we manage our land for farming, our unsustainable fishing, the failure of our water companies to process pollution (though Scottish Water is a lot better than many), ongoing encroachment through development; all these are existential threats to the natural world in the UK. Their damage is amplified by overall climate change. There is massive interdependency in our ecosystems. Much of our food production relies on pollinating insects or insects that eat pest species. The report indicates that both of these categories of invertebrates are under severe threat.
• However while the State of Nature report makes for shocking reading it also offers hope. Conservation actions are growing in number and impact. Supporting these actions locally and nationally are a great way to ecological sustainability.