2007 was a good year for the human race, according to an article in today's Society Guardian supplement.
It increased its numbers by more than 80 million people, dominated all other lifeforms, and suffered no major setbacks. Most of its 6.5bn members lived longer than they could have expected only 30 years ago, moved around and traded with each other more than ever , and mostly survived whatever the natural world chucked at them.
But it's an uncertain future. A landmark UN study, called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, has shown us that around 60% of the ecosystem services supporting life on earth are being seriously degraded or used unsustainably.
It warned of new diseases, sudden changes in water quality, the creation of "dead zones" along the coasts, the collapse of fisheries, and shifts in regional climate.
The rush for resources around the world has led to steep rises in the prices of food, oil, land and most other commodities. Agri-businesses are turning to growing biofuels instead of food for people.
Indonesia, Africa, Latin America and India have all cut down swaths of tropical forest.
The price of oil rose from $55 a barrel in January 2007 to more than $90 by the end of the year, raising food prices and tensions even further across the world.
Now there is a race for unconventional sources of energy, with Venezuela and some areas of the US and Canada now in the frontline of massive opencast mining operations to extract oil from shales and tar sands.
Agriculture has further consolidated into the hands of ever fewer companies - Syngenta, Bayer, Monsanto, BASF, Dow and DuPont now control nearly 85% of the $30bn annual pesticide market; Cargill, Archer Daniels and Bunge control nearly 90% of global grain trade; a handful of firms account for about half the world sales of seeds, of which about a quarter are sales of genetically engineered seeds.
But this year will also be remembered as the year that climate change rose up the international agenda, the article says. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel peace prize and world governments finally agreed in Bali to work together to try to stave off the worst effects.
But the tumultuous year of change and transition ended with the human race signalling that it was at least prepared to act in some kind of unison. Whether the 180 countries that met in Bali can now really shift their economies to meet climate change will define the age. But we won't know that for some years.
So what has 2007 meant to you in terms of the environment? What do you think the future holds? Can we believe the Bali roadmap will help us tackle climate change?
