In late May 2020, a 23-square-kilometer horde of locusts entered Argentina after passing through Paraguay. The insects landed first in the provinces of Santa Fé and Formosa, both of which are essential for agriculture. Millions invaded cities and farms, devouring all the crops in the area in a matter of hours. The locusts were enormous; technicians from the Argentine government measured specimens

On today’s program, we’ll travel to Pakistan and India to learn how the insects have affected these countries. But first, let’s find out more about locusts, and why they’ve been so plentiful during the past year. Many scientists believe that climate change is largely responsible for the current locust plague. The unusually warm, wet weather in the normally arid areas around the Arabian Peninsula h

On today’s program we’ll travel to Africa to learn about the recent massive invasion of locusts that the continent has experienced. The plague began in June 2019 and has continued through 2020. Billions of desert locusts, resembling dark storm clouds, have descended on the Horn of Africa, destroying vast areas of cropland and vegetation. Dr. Rick Overson of Arizona State University's Global Locust

On today’s program, we’ll look at some of the solutions emerging all around the globe. According to a 2019 study published in the journal Science Progress, as many as 90% of all plastic items are used only once and then discarded. Plastic bags are among the biggest sources of pollution, with as many as five trillion being consumed globally each year. When disposed of improperly, the bags clog wate

On today’s program, we continue our exploration, as we travel to Africa to visit the magnificent River Nile. This 6,650-kilometer-long waterway runs through 11 countries on the African continent, and an estimated 250 million people rely on it for drinking water, household use, and irrigation. In June 2020, the British free-to-air television news channel Sky News aired a remarkable documentary call

On today’s program, we’ll examine the global issue of plastic pollution and learn how the problem began. The production of plastic is relatively new; the first manufacture only began during the 1940’s. Over the ensuing decades, we have become increasingly reliant on plastic in many aspects of our lives. If we look around us, we’ll see that we’re surrounded by plastic. Since the development of plas

It is becoming increasingly clear that hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical cyclones around the world are becoming stronger and potentially more deadly as the planet warms due to the climate crisis. On May 20, 2020, it was reported that Amphan, the strongest cyclonic storm since the 2007 season, had made landfall along India’s east coast and in Bangladesh. With wind speeds gusting to more than 240 k

Apart from heatwaves and wildfires, climate change has also triggered many other extreme-weather events, including intense storms, floods, and blizzards. For example, a series of recent winter storms in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe led to severe downpours, floods, high tides, and other extreme weather events. The first storm, Atiyah, swept across the Republic of Ireland on December

Today we’ll further explore the causes, interconnections, and solutions for our planet’s public health and economic crises. In June 2020, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) released a report entitled, “COVID-19: Urgent Call to Protect People and Nature,” urging governments, corporations, organizations, and the public to take action to restore our broken relationship with nature and thus avoid fu

„Chunfeng powiedział: …chyba że Prawdziwy Pan (Zbawiciel) nadchodzi, to jak ten świat może mieć cywilizację? Taizong powiedział: Co to jest cywilizacja? Chunfeng powiedział: Ta osoba ma naczynie na swej głowie, dwie ręce w niebie, dwie stopy w ziemi; zawiązuje pas ważący 4.5 kg wokół pasa i ma na sobie tkaninę długości dwadzieścia sześć i pół metra…”

“Through COVID-19 the planet has delivered its strongest warning yet that we must change our ways. Human activity has altered virtually every part of the land. As we displace the natural world, we’re destroying vital ecosystems and the biodiversity that thrives on them. We are causing climate change, harming our ability to feed ourselves, opening the door to new illnesses such as COVID-19. It’s ti

Today we’ll explore more about drought-induced conditions, this time in Asia and Australia. More than 66 million Southeast Asians have had their lives disrupted by drought in the past three decades. Severe drought and the construction of dams have driven the Mekong River to its lowest level in 100 years, endangering food supplies for tens of millions of people. In East Asia, a severe drought is pl

On today’s show, we’ll explore the severe drought conditions that are affecting Africa and Europe. Home to the Sahara, the world’s largest hot desert, North Africa is one of the driest regions on Earth, where it's common to have no rainfall for more than a year in some places. However, for many years climate change has increased the lack of rain and abnormally hot weather across East Africa, South

As the world warms, Earth’s climate has been undergoing intense heat waves caused by the increased chance of extremely hot days and nights. Warming air also boosts the evaporation of surface water, thus worsening the effects of droughts. More droughts create dry fields and forests that are prone to catching fire, so increased global temperatures mean longer wildfire seasons around the world. Droug

The threat of future zoonoses or animal-transmitted diseases is even more concerning. Currently, over 72 billion land animals are slaughtered for human consumption every year. And what’s even more troubling is that many of these animals were raised on factory farms. For years, world health experts have warned about the dangers of factory farms as uncontrolled sources of new viruses. World organiza

Over the past century, almost every pandemic has been a zoonoses. World authorities and organizations have become increasingly alarmed about the ever-increasing number of zoonotic diseases. The World Health Organization has also expressed concern, estimating that approximately one billion illnesses and millions of deaths occur each year from zoonoses, and that 60% of all existing infectious diseas

In late December 2019, news of a strange new virus emerging in Southern China began to surface. The virus, it was reported, was highly contagious. The World Health Organization named it “coronavirus disease,” or “COVID-19.” COVID-19 proved to be extremely contagious and spread like wildfire through China’s massive population. On March 11,2020, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General o

In today’s program, we will learn about the effects that Sea Level Rise (SLR) is having on our coastal communities, how it will affect the world in years to come, and what we can still do about it before it’s too late. A research paper entitled “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” was published in the January 2020 issue of BioScience. The Paper, written in collaboration with the Amer

In previous episodes, we learned that “Year Zero,” the year our planet could be destroyed, is 2026. However, we can prevent this apocalypse by making one simple change: global adoption of the vegan lifestyle. Only in this way can we prevent “Year Zero” from happening. “So, this is going to be over. And then most people are going to flip when social pressures flip the other way and many people star

In this series we will learn about the effects of the climate change crisis on our oceans, how this affects our world today and what we can do to reverse the damaging impacts. For the past 50 years, the ocean has been absorbing 90% of all the heat generated by global warming. Unfortunately, with the ever-increasing concentration of greenhouse gases, global temperatures have continued to rise, and