I go on and on about this... But I really feel that people don't get it.
This is one of the summary points from a landmark study Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.
I has been a long held belief of mine, based on biologist's theories, that ecological destruction will most readily mannifest itself in the following manner.
The degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century and is a barrier to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals. In all the four plausible futures explored by the scientists, they project progress in eliminating hunger, but at far slower rates than needed to halve number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Experts warn that changes in ecosystems such as deforestation influence the abundance of human pathogens such as malaria and cholera, as well as the risk of emergence of new diseases. Malaria, for example, accounts for 11 percent of the disease burden in Africa and had it been eliminated 35 years ago, the continentÍs gross domestic product would have increased by $100 billion. æ"
In a nutshell:
Prepare for pandemics. It's nature trying to balance the human population out. SARS, chicken influenza, Ebola, AID's... just the beginning.
UPDATE: Bob as usual, has some good insight.
If you can handle reading that... I dare you to go read Jim. Who predicts other horrible scenarios in our near future. Good news is that they aren't environmental. They involve the nearing energy crisis and economic meltdown.
6:40:45 AM 
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