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It's a risky, not to say foolhardy, business predicting the future, but some global trends are so large they are impossible to ignore and the future becomes a little less difficult to see. Indicators of what the future might be like for the natural environment include populationgrowth , acts of environmental vandalism such as deforestation, global warming, and pollution. Since the 1960s, the human population has roughly doubled and it is likely to rise by another third by 2030. This will of course lead to increased demands for food, water, energy, and space to live, necessarily putting us in competition with other species - and, if the past is anything to go by - with obvious results. Humans already use 40% of the world's primary production (energy) and this is bound to increase, with serious consequences for nature. We are fast losing overall biodiversity, including micro-organisms in the soil and sea, not to mention both tropical and temperate forests, which are crucial to maintaining productive soils, clean water, climate regulation, and resistance to disease. It seems we take these things for granted and governments do not appear to factor them in when making decisions that affect the environment. One prediction that has been made is that, in the UK at least, warming and the loss of rare habitats could lead to more continental species coming to live here, and that in towns and cities, we will have more species that have adapted to urban life and living alongside humans.
