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The period since 1950 has brought "the most rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind". [106] Through 2018, humans have reduced forest area by ~30% and grasslands/shrubs by ~68%, to make way for livestock grazing and crops for humans. [107]
[3] Environment destruction caused by humans is a global, ongoing problem. [4] Water pollution also cause problems to marine life. [5] Some scholars believe that the projected peak global population of roughly 9-10 billion people could live sustainably within the earth's ecosystems if humans worked to live sustainably within planetary boundaries.
But, the relatively small human population had little impact on a global scale until the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750. This event, followed by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in 1909, which allowed large-scale manufacture of fertilizers , led directly to rapid changes to many of the planet's most important physical ...
Human history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers.They migrated out of Africa during the Last Ice Age and had spread across Earth's continental land except Antarctica by the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago.
Environmental history is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time, emphasising the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs and vice versa. Environmental history first emerged in the United States out of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and much of its impetus still stems from present-day ...
Annual world population growth peaked at 2.1% in 1968 and has since dropped to 1.1%. [1] According to the most recent United Nations' projections, the global human population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050 and would peak at around 10.4 billion people in the 2080s, before decreasing, noting that fertility rates are falling worldwide.
Since 2000, rising CO 2 emissions in China and the rest of world have surpassed the output of the United States and Europe. [363] Per person, the United States generates CO 2 at a far faster rate than other primary regions. [363] Nearly all countries in the world are parties to the 1994 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ...
Over the last two decades, the world's oceans have absorbed 20 to 30% of emitted CO 2. [6]: 450 Thus, around half of human-caused CO 2 emissions have been absorbed by land plants and by the oceans. [73] This fraction of absorbed emissions is not static. If future CO 2 emissions decrease, the Earth will be able to absorb up to around 70%.