Scary Outlook

Last week saw the release of The United Nations Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook. It is a rather monstrous 540 pages (22.5-mb PDF), but the press release alone is frightening enough.

Maybe what is scarier is that I was hard pressed to find much mention of it in any U.S. press. Perhaps, they are still hard at work digesting the full weight of it. There is, however, plenty to read in foreign papers.

The Times (U.K.) science editor, Marc Henderson, writes in his piece: "Though the report's language might sound extreme, with talk of 'humanity's very survival' at risk, the structure of the WEO actually lends itself to conservatism. Its findings deserve to be taken very seriously as a result -- this is not scaremongering to make a point."

When the point's as important as this one, is scaremongering really such a bad thing? OK, point taken that this report is pure, peer-reviewed science -- and scary to boot.

Although the report does highlight and praise some progress, it points to persistent and intractable problems. Can you guess what those might be?