Plants and Animals

Scientists project that 25% of all plant and animal species on Earth are threatened with extinction by 2050 unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced. In a report published in the journal Nature, a team of 19 scientists, lead by Prof Chris Thomas of Leeds University, studied six biodiversity-rich regions around the world representing 20% of the planet’s land area. Using a range of climate change data supplied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the study found that for the mid-range global warming scenarios, 15% to 37% of all species in the regions considered could be driven to extinction by 2050. When these projections were extrapolated globally, over a million species were threatened as a result of climate change.