大象传媒

We are facing a 'ghastly future' and we need to be much more realistic about the changes we're going to have to make, politically and socially, to adjust to environmental changes. That's the warning from a paper released today by 17 scientists from different universities around the world. They say political leaders need a 'cold shower' to wake them up to the dangers ahead and to make more connections between cause and effect.

The lead author of the paper, Professor Corey Bradshaw, is a Fellow in Global Ecology at Flinders University in southern Australia.

"We've disturbed the natural environments to the point where these global scale pandemics have finally come home to roost... human population is still growing and will do so for at least the next century and our consumption rates are increasing... We have nothing but huge problems to address yet our capacity to do much about them is dwindling with the rise of populism."

(Photo: a burning earth. Credit: Getty Images)