Our beautiful green and blue planet earth is teetering on the brink of a global environmental disaster. The earth has been devastated before, such as the massive asteroid strike that drove the dinosaurs into extinction or when the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted 630,000 years ago and caused an ice age.

But today it is humankind that is generating an ecological disaster. The people-driven cause of environmental destruction is multifaceted and not a single event. It is slightly slower-moving than a single-day planetary catastrophe but nearly as bad.

A combination of the carbon-loading of the atmosphere, the acidification of the oceans, toxic wastes being dumped into waters, the destruction of forested areas, including rain forests, nuclear plant accidents, massive oil spills in the ocean, plastics pollutions in the ocean and other factors are all coming together to wreak havoc on Mother Earth.

Scientists say we are now in the midst of a mass extinction event. It’s happening as you read this. That means that thousands of animals are dying and whole species are going extinct at an accelerated rate. Scientists say that 1 in 4 mammals living on the earth today will soon disappear forever. For amphibian life forms, that number of 4 in 10.

Keep in mind that human beings will not be immune from planet-wide ecological degradation. A warming planet means rising ocean levels that are likely to engulf some of the region's most populated coastal areas. Food shortages and famines may increase dramatically as more land is lost to soil erosion and depleted nutrient content. Shortages of freshwater have already become a significant problem in many places around the world. Gigantic wildfires are devastating vast areas of land in places like California and Australia, and they return and get worse every summer season. The list goes on.

That’s why some world leaders, including Pope Francis and French President Emmanuel Macron, have recently called for putting a new law on the international books for the crime of “ecocide.” Just as genocide denotes the extermination of a race of people, ecocide will be defined as a “crime against the environment.”

An example might be the past several years in Brazil where, under the policies of President Jair Bolsonaro, enormous areas of rain forest have been cleared for commercial purposes causing immense loss of animal life and weakening the planet’s oxygen regeneration system.