A surfer rides a wave in a rubbish-filled bay in Java, Indonesia. Photo / Zak Noyle, Foundation for Deep Ecology
A surfer rides a wave in a rubbish-filled bay in Java, Indonesia. Photo / Zak Noyle, Foundation for Deep Ecology
Global warming isn't the only thing to worry about. Overpopulation, pollution, poaching and mining are just a few of mankind's other harms that are leaving the Earth scorched and ruined.
However, the devastating effects of the digital age, demanding food production and melting glaciers are something most people don't seeevery day.
Image 1 of 29: Ground zero in the war on nature-cattle graze amongst burning Amazon jungle, Brazil; Photo / Daniel Beltra.
In order to raise awareness of the issues threatening life as we know it on this planet, the Foundation for Deep Ecology and Population Media Centre have released a collection of sobering pictures, showing the widespread destruction of land, skies and seas.
One picture shows the street grid of Los Angeles at night, a city known for its infamous rush hour traffic. The exhaust from cars and airplanes are thought to be one of the major contributing factors to global warming, and the effects are seen in pictures of a melting glacier in Norway and a devastating wildfire in Colorado.
Some of the pictures show the pileup of waste across the world, from piles of tires in the Nevada desert to burning mounds of computer parts in Accra, Ghana.
While most of the Western world has systems in place for waste disposal, that's not necessarily the case in places like the island nation of Java where locals are forced to dump their garbage into local rivers and streams. One picture shows a surfer gliding through a wave darted with plastic packaging and other refuse.
With the increasing demand for wood for home building, the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest are being turned into barren wastelands thanks to logging. One of the pictures shows a hill on Vancouver Island in Canada turned bald thanks to logging, while stumps litter a reservoir in Oregon's Willamette National Forest after clear cutting.
Forests are also going to waste in the Amazon, where one picture shows the jungle burning so that grazing cows can move in and feed the world's ever-growing population.
Overpopulation is especially evidence in aerial views of crammed New Dehli, India and Mexico City, Mexico - two of the most densely populated cities in the world.
Not seen in the pictures is the 10,000-year-old Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica, which according to a new NASA study, won't exist by the end of the decade.
The new study estimates that the ice shelf will "disintegrate completely" before 2020 thanks to a series of warm summers that have reduced the shelf from 4,445-square-miles in 1995 to just 618 today.
The Mir Mine in Russia is the world's largest diamond mine. Photo / Google Earth, Foundation for Deep Ecology
Luckily, world leaders are planning a meeting in September to address these very serious concerns, developing environmental goals to be followed through 2030. And in December, the United Nations will meet in Paris in an attempt to set limits on pollution.
