Is the world being destroyed?

Dead almond trees after 2021 California drought. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

All over the world, fresh water is disappearing, and a new analysis reveals that much of it is entering the ocean, with drying continents now contributing more to the alarming rise in global sea levels than melting ice sheets.

The research team, led by Earth system scientist Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar from FLAME University in India, says that urgent action is required to prepare for much drier times ahead, thanks to climate change and human groundwater depletion.

Using more than two decades of satellite observations from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and its follow-on mission, the researchers created a picture of how terrestrial water storage has changed since 2002, and why.

"We find that the continents (all land excluding Greenland and Antarctica) have undergone unprecedented rates of drying and that the continental areas experiencing drying are increasing by about twice the size of the state of California each year," the authors write.

Humans have majorly disrupted Earth's water cycle by emitting greenhouse gases that change our atmosphere, and diverting waterways and rainfall catchments. Although 'wet' areas have been getting wetter, and 'dry' areas have been getting drier, these shifts aren't keeping step.

"Dry areas are drying at a faster rate than wet areas are wetting," the team writes. "At the same time, the area experiencing drying has increased, while the area experiencing wetting has decreased."

Terrestrial water storage trends (February 2003 to April 2024) averaged for every country. (Chandanpurkar et al., Sci. Adv., 2025)

This means terrestrial water is, on the whole, diminishing, with devastating effects worldwide. That includes freshwater sources on the surface, like lakes and rivers, and also groundwater stored in aquifers deep below Earth's surface. The majority of the human population – 75 percent of us – live in the 101 countries where fresh water is being lost at increasing rates.

Where has it all gone? The ocean, mostly. Enough fresh water is being displaced from the continents that it is now contributing more to sea level rise than ice sheets.

This net shift towards continental drying is driven largely by terrestrial water loss in high-latitude areas like Canada and Russia (regions we don't usually think of as 'dry'), which the authors suspect is due to the melting ice and permafrost in these regions.

In continents without glaciers, 68 percent of the loss of terrestrial water supply can be attributed to human groundwater depletion. Recent and unprecedented extreme droughts in Central America and Europe have also played a part, and events like these are only expected to become more frequent and severe with the climate crisis.

2025 was declared England's driest spring in 132 years. This reservoir got so low that an ancient packhorse bridge was exposed. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

As our growing fossil fuel emissions alter the patterns of rainfall that we once relied on, people are turning in desperation to groundwater, which is putting further pressure on these water sources, which are not being replenished at the rate they are drained.

On many continents, overuse of groundwater could be traced to dry agricultural regions that rely on this water source to irrigate crops: for instance, California's Central Valley, which produces 70 percent of the world's almonds, and cotton production near the now totally-dry Aral Sea in Central Asia.

"At present, overpumping groundwater is the largest contributor to rates of terrestrial water storage decline in drying regions, significantly amplifying the impacts of increasing temperature, aridification, and extreme drought events," the authors write.

"Protecting the world's groundwater supply is paramount in a warming world and on continents that we now know are drying."

They hope regional, national, and international efforts to develop sustainable uses of groundwater can help preserve this precious resource for many years to come.

"While efforts to slow climate change may be sputtering, there is no reason why efforts to slow rates of continental drying should do the same," the team writes.

Abstract

Seas are polluted with macro- (>5 mm) and microplastics (<5 mm). However, few studies account for both types when modeling water quality, thus limiting our understanding of the origin (e.g., basins) and sources of plastics. In this work, we model riverine macro- and microplastic exports to seas to identify their main sources in over ten thousand basins. We estimate that rivers export approximately 0.5 million tons of plastics per year worldwide. Microplastics are dominant in almost 40% of the basins in Europe, North America and Oceania, because of sewage effluents. Approximately 80% of the global population live in river basins where macroplastics are dominant because of mismanaged solid waste. These basins include many African and Asian rivers. In 10% of the basins, macro- and microplastics in seas (as mass) are equally important because of high sewage effluents and mismanaged solid waste production. Our results could be useful to prioritize reduction policies for plastics.

Modelling of riverine plastic exports finds microplastics dominate in areas with many sewage systems and macroplastics where waste is mismanaged. In some areas both plastics are important. Reduction at source is needed.

Abstract

The ubiquitous presence of airborne microplastics (MPs) in different indoor environments prompts serious concerns about the degree to which we inhale these particles and their potential impact on human health. Previous studies have mostly targeted MP in the 20–200 µm size range, which are less likely to efficiently penetrate into the lungs. In this study, we specifically investigate airborne, indoor suspended MPs in the inhalable 1–10 µm (MP1–10 µm) range in residential and car cabin environments, by using Raman spectroscopy. The median concentration of total suspended indoor MPs for the residential environment was 528 MPs/m3 and 2,238 MPs/m3 in the car cabin environment. The predominant polymer type in the residential environment was polyethylene (PE), and polyamide (PA) in the car cabin environment. Fragments were the dominant shape for 97% of the analyzed MPs, and 94% of MPs were smaller than 10 µm (MP1–10 µm), following a power size distribution law (the number of MP fragments increases exponentially as particle size decreases). We combine the new MP1–10 µm observations with published indoor MP data to derive a consensus indoor MP concentration distribution, which we use to estimate human adult indoor MP inhalation of 3,200 MPs/day for the 10–300 µm (MP10–300 µm) range, and 68,000 MPs/day for MP1–10 µm. The MP1–10 µm exposure estimates are 100-fold higher than previous estimates that were extrapolated from larger MP sizes, and suggest that the health impacts of MP inhalation may be more substantial than we realize.

Good topsoil does not accumulate quickly. Less than a tenth of a millimeter of soil forms per year in some places, though the amount can vary depending on the environment. Compare that to the rate of topsoil erosion in agricultural regions of the United States: around half a millimeter per year, or 5 times as much, according to a recent study in the journal Catena. That imbalance is imperiling our ability to grow food in large swaths of America’s breadbasket.

“It’s really important that soil erosion should be mitigated,” said Shahab Shojaeezadeh, a hydrologist at the University of Kassel in Germany and Sultan Qaboos University in Oman and the study’s first author. “If soil is not protected, we are losing a valuable resource.”

Croplands see far higher rates of soil erosion than other places, often because tilling leaves soil exposed. It’s in croplands that erosion is most impactful, however. Past studies estimated that erosion costs the United States about $8 billion each year and that globally, it reduces agricultural food production by 33.7 million metric tons per year. Rates of soil erosion have likely worsened over the past decade, and climate change will probably make that trend worse.

To better understand the future of our soils, Shojaeezadeh and his coauthors took precipitation data from 3,200 weather stations maintained by NOAA, along with land use and land cover data from the Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites, and estimated how much erosion is caused by rainfall, the main cause of soil loss.

They paired those estimates with a deep learning model that estimated future rainfall changes and a machine learning model that showed how land use might change in the future under three different climate scenarios.

Their results indicated that the United States currently sees 4.7 metric tons of topsoil washed from every hectare of cropland per year, on average. By 2050, that could increase anywhere from 8% to 21%, depending on the level of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of those increases would happen in the South and East, the authors estimated, where erosion could increase by more than 50% in some places.

Real Problem, Difficult Predictions

Soil erosion is a real and challenging issue, said Bruno Basso, a soil scientist at Michigan State University who was not affiliated with the research.

“We lose about a pound of soil for every bushel of corn that is produced,” he said.

The study’s estimates of erosion in agricultural areas are stark and line up with the results of previous studies, Basso said. But estimating exactly how much soil erosion is likely to happen in the future is exceedingly difficult, he noted.

Part of the issue is that changes to agricultural practices, land use, and more now will affect soil erosion in the future. For example, increasing practices such as alley cropping and cover cropping would reduce erosion. But predicting to what extent those practices will be adopted by farmers isn’t really possible.

In addition, multiple factors affect soil erosion, sometimes in unpredictable ways. A trend toward monoculture crops today has hindered soil conservation, said Rick Cruse, a soil scientist at Iowa State University who wasn’t involved with the study. Those same monocultures also leave more biomass sitting in fields when the season is over, “kind of like a carpet,” which can help protect soil, he said. The balance between those competing factors could change in the future as weather grows more unpredictable, though in what ways is unclear.

Most soil erosion doesn’t lead to soil loss either, Cruse noted. Soil that is eroded from one location usually ends up deposited somewhere nearby, instead of being washed away into rivers and oceans. So much of our topsoil is being reshuffled, rather than simply disappearing. On top of that, the amount of land used for agriculture will likely expand in the future, and the ways we use that land will also change. The study found that 4.6%–7.8% of future erosion could come simply from establishing new agricultural and urban areas.

Holding On to Our Soil

These factors make accurately estimating how much topsoil we’ll have left by 2050, or any date in the future, reasonably difficult. Nevertheless, it’s clear that topsoil erosion is a serious issue, Basso and Cruse said, one that climate change will almost certainly worsen.

Increases in the intensity of rainfall, paired with droughts that leave soil dry and loose, would leach more topsoil from agricultural fields each year. For example, the study showed that the erosive effects of rainfall will likely increase on average in the future.

Some of that eroded soil makes its way into rivers such as the Mississippi and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Agricultural soil carries nutrients from fertilizers that can lead to toxic algal blooms in the ocean, threatening sea life. Back in the fields, less topsoil means plants find it harder to grow, lowering productivity and straining food supplies.

Researchers have suggested potential strategies for reducing soil loss. Increasing the use of cover crops, which Basso said act as “an umbrella” for soil by reducing the impact of raindrops, is one. Alley cropping, or planting rows of trees and shrubs in fields to shield soil and hold it in place, is another strategy.

For those things to work, Cruse said government policy would be most helpful. “Not all farmers can grow cover crops successfully. Not all farmers can do alley cropping or do some of the things we’d really like to see,” he said. “And then policy moves them, or acts to fail to move them, in one direction or the other.”

Cruse said it’s likely we already have the tools to prevent large-scale soil erosion and hold on to the precious centimeters of topsoil that feed hundreds of millions of people in the country. Whether we’ll do it is another question.

“I’m optimistic it can be done,” he said. “I’m not optimistic that it will be done.”

[...]
The Treaty is the first legally binding international agreement safeguarding marine life in the High Seas, which covers two-thirds of the world’s ocean and plays a critical role in ensuring a healthy planet. It provides new tools to halt biodiversity loss and ocean degradation through enabling the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters and ensuring environmental impact assessments of planned human activities. It will also boost equity for developing countries through increasing knowledge and technology access, strengthening capacity, and ensuring the equitable access and sharing of the benefits of marine genetic resources.
[...]
Adopted in June 2023, after nearly two decades of discussion and negotiations, the Treaty opened for signature on 20 September 2023. Palau became the first country to ratify on 22 January 2024, and since then States from every region have joined. In addition to the 60 ratifications, 142 countries plus the European Union have signed, signaling their intent to ratify.

Under the Treaty, the first Conference of the Parties (CoP) must convene within a year of entry into force, likely toward the end of 2026. Preparatory work is already underway at the UN to build the institutions and processes in time for CoP1 that will ensure the Treaty’s ambition and long-term effectiveness. Governments and stakeholders are also laying the groundwork for developing High Seas MPA proposals to protect critical biodiversity sites once the Treaty is operational. These include the Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges, the Lord Howe Rise and South Tasman Sea, the Sargasso Sea and the Thermal Dome in the Eastern Pacific.
... ... ...
Further ratifications are expected during the upcoming UN General Assembly High-Level Week in New York (beginning 22 September 2025).

In this moment of total madness, when humankind seems to have lost all reference points and even its very humanity, we must not forget that all human beings of this planet are victims of our destructive folly, just as all of its living creatures. This week, I am at the World Conference on Science and Art for Sustainability in Belgrade, Serbia, to present the results of the recent work by myself and my coworkers on the biochemical damage created by increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. A few days ago, I published a second, more in-depth paper on this subject on Qeios. Here, I am posting an excellent summary of our results by Eduardo Martinez de la Fe.

In this article on El Periódico de España, Eduardo Martinez de la Fe comments on the recent paper published by myself and my colleagues on the negative effects of CO2 on human health. A stake through the heart of the vampirical idea that CO2 is good for us.

Our mental acuity is at risk

By exceeding 420 parts per million of CO₂ in the atmosphere, we have crossed an unprecedented threshold for our species, forcing our biology to operate in a chemical environment for which it is not designed. This planetary experiment is already showing its effects, and the price could be our own mental acuity.

When we think of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the first image that usually comes to mind is global warming. We have come to see it as the main culprit behind climate change, a gas that traps heat and alters the planet's temperature. However, a critical analysis published in the journal Environmental Science Advances by a team of scientists led by Italian chemist Ugo Bardi forces us to broaden our view and consider CO₂ in a new light: that of a biochemical pollutant with direct and worrying effects on our health and the biosphere.

The central thesis of the study is that, while the greenhouse effect of CO₂ is a problem of enormous magnitude, focusing solely on it causes us to ignore its other facets. CO₂ is a chemically active molecule that, as its concentration in the atmosphere increases, triggers a series of consequences that go far beyond the climate.

Direct impact on our body and brain

Perhaps the most alarming warning in the report focuses on human health. Our bodies have evolved over millions of years in an atmosphere with CO₂ levels that rarely exceeded 300 parts per million (ppm). Today, we exceed 420 ppm, and the figure continues to rise. This alteration, unprecedented in the history of our species, interferes with a fundamental biological process: breathing.

The mechanism is subtle but powerful. The transport of oxygen in our blood, carried out by hemoglobin, is finely regulated by the concentration of CO₂. When CO₂ levels in the blood rise, hemoglobin's ability to bind oxygen and distribute it to tissues is compromised. This phenomenon, known as hypercapnia, has direct consequences.

Recent studies have shown that exposure to CO₂ concentrations between 1,000 and 2,000 ppm, levels that are easily reached in enclosed spaces such as offices, classrooms, or even in our poorly ventilated homes, causes a measurable decrease in cognitive performance. People exposed to these levels show a reduced ability to make decisions, solve problems, and think strategically. It essentially slows down our brain.

But the effects don't end there. Chronic exposure to high levels of CO₂ can cause acidosis and physiological stress: this occurs when the body tries to compensate for the increase in blood acidity (caused by dissolved CO₂) by mobilizing calcium from the bones, which in the long term can lead to calcification of the kidneys and arteries.

Increased inflammation, oxidative stress, and changes in heart rate and blood pressure have also been observed, even at moderate levels. Furthermore, studies in animals exposed to CO₂ concentrations predicted for the near future show problems with lung and muscle development, hyperactivity, and reduced attention, the researchers warn.

An evolutionary disconnect

The report raises a disturbing question: Are our large, complex brains adapted to function in the world we are creating? The evolution of hominids and the development of a brain with high neuronal density occurred during the Pleistocene, a time with very low CO₂ levels (between 180 and 280 ppm). We are forcing our biology, designed for a low-CO₂ environment, to operate in radically different conditions.

The authors suggest that this “evolutionary disconnect” could be related to recently observed trends, such as the “reverse Flynn effect” (a global decline in IQ scores) or the increase in the incidence of senile dementia, phenomena that until now were attributed to generic environmental factors.
Reference:
Carbon dioxide as a pollutant: the risks on human health and the stability of the biosphere. Ugo Bardi et al. Environmental Science Advances, 2025, 4, 1364-1372. DOI:10.1039/D5VA00017C

The myth of “food for plants”

The report also addresses the argument that an increase in CO₂ is beneficial because it acts as a ‘fertilizer’ for plants. While it is true that higher concentrations can accelerate photosynthesis in some trees and plants (a phenomenon known as “global greening”), the study strongly qualifies this idea.

It clarifies that this fertilizing effect does not apply to vital crops such as corn, sugarcane, or millet (C4 plants), which have a different photosynthesis mechanism. It also points out that the increase in biomass due to CO₂ does not translate into higher nutritional content. Plants grow faster, but with fewer vitamins and minerals.

Finally, the report indicates that plants adapted to higher CO₂ reduce their transpiration, which can alter rainfall patterns and increase the risk of flooding by changing the functioning of the “biotic pump” that transports atmospheric moisture. Conclusion: the small agricultural benefits, if any, do not come close to offsetting the damage to human health and ecosystems from increased CO₂ emissions.

A redefined call to action

The report's conclusion is clear: treating the CO₂ crisis solely as a temperature problem is a dangerous mistake. Geoengineering solutions such as Solar Radiation Management (SRM), which propose cooling the planet by reflecting sunlight, would do nothing to curb the biochemical pollution of CO₂. We might live on a cooler planet, but with air that continues to negatively affect our cognitive abilities and health.

The only real solution, according to the authors, is to drastically reduce emissions and, in the long term, find ways to return atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to levels compatible with our biology.

We need to start seeing carbon dioxide not just as a gas that warms the planet, but as what it really is: a pollutant that, at current levels, is already compromising the health of the biosphere and our own.

For life on Earth, the oceans are essential. Not only do they supply us with food and resources, they also play a big role in maintaining a stable climate: between one-quarter to one-third of all CO2 emitted by humans, which would otherwise stay in the atmosphere to further intensify climate change, is captured and stored by the sea.

But the oceans are in trouble. Already facing an onslaught of human pressures—including overfishing, pollution, rising temperatures, and acidification—the world’s seas could see the burden placed on them double over the next couple of decades. This would have huge negative consequences for biodiversity as well as for humans around the world.

An international team, led by the National Center for Ecosystem Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has modeled how the pressure placed on the world’s oceans could change in the future. Their analysis projects that by around 2050, the cumulative pressure on the oceans could increase 2.2- to 2.6-fold compared to today. The most rapid increases in impact will occur near the equator, at the poles, and in coastal areas.

“Our cumulative impact on the oceans, which is already substantial, is going to double by 2050—in just 25 years,” Ben Halpern, marine ecologist and director of NCEAS, explained in a university statement. “It’s sobering. And it’s unexpected, not because impacts will be increasing—that is not surprising—but because they will be increasing so much, so fast.”

Halpern and his team, in cooperation with Nelson Mandela University in South Africa, integrated 17 datasets from around the world to create a comprehensive global model of the extent and intensity of the impacts of human activities on the ocean. Past studies have often dealt with the impacts of specific activities in isolation; the current study integrates these activities to more clearly highlight the future vision of the marine environment.

What emerges is a picture of further deterioration in already heavily impacted areas, such as coastal waters, as well as rapidly expanding impacts across the high seas, which have been relatively stable until now. In equatorial regions, the impact of human activities could increase nearly three-fold between the 2040s and 2050s.

Specific major impacts include rising sea temperatures, declining marine resources due to fishing, rising sea levels, acidification of seawater (which is a consequence of CO2 dissolving in the sea), and algal blooms due to the influx of nutrients that flow into the ocean, principally from farms. While these burdens are each serious in isolation, their combined effects could exceed the resilience of ecosystems and lead to irreversible losses.

Researchers warn that this cumulative impact will then hit society—for instance, by lowering food supplies, killing off jobs in tourism and fishing, flooding low-lying lands, and destroying coral reefs that protect coastlines from storm surges and tsunamis. There will be direct impacts on human livelihoods and economies, leading to regional economic instability, Halpern said.

Developing countries and small island nations in particular do not have the economic wherewithal to take adaptation measures, despite their often heavy dependence on marine resources. The cumulative effects will therefore appear unevenly across countries. Oceanic change is not just an environmental issue; it is an issue that concerns the stability of the international community as a whole.

However, the projections of this study are only possibilities; such a future does not have to arrive. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to lessen climate change and ocean acidification, systematically managing fisheries resources, avoiding coastal pollution, and preserving coastal mangroves and salt marshes may help to mitigate the deterioration. There is still room to minimize the impact.