THE twin emergencies of climate and nature are “threats of existential proportions”, the environment minister has said following warnings that 90% of the plankton in the Atlantic may have been wiped out by chemical pollution.
The Edinburgh-based Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes), which has spent two years sampling levels of plankton – the blanket term for the billions of organisms which inhabit the ocean and sustain marine life – has warned that “an environmental catastrophe is unfolding” and that “humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.”
