Though some dismiss them as crude-oil Cassandras, the peak-oilers are not wild-eyed pessimists. Their number includes men like T. Boone Pickens, the Dallas oil tycoon, and Houston’s Matt Simmons, who founded the world’s largest energy investment banking company. They point to hard data indicating that the world is quite simply running out of oil and doing so quickly…

Satellite imaging has revealed that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in America, an essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely damaged some 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana.

The die-off, caused by wind and later by weeks-long pooling of stagnant water, was so massive researchers say it will add significantly to the greenhouse gas buildup - ultimately putting as much carbon from dying vegetation into the air as the rest of the U.S. forest takes out in a year of photosynthesis. Also, the downing of so many trees has opened vast and sometimes fragile tracts of land to several aggressive and fast-growing exotic species that are squeezing out far more environmentally productive native species.

An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year. Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

Sri Lanka’s Horton Plains slender loris has been seen just four times since 1937. Miss Waldron’s red colobus monkey was not found in an exhaustive six-year study ending in 1999 and there have been no definite sightings since. Vietnam’s golden-headed langur and the Hainan gibbon in China both number in the dozens.

These are the primate species on the edge of oblivion and, according to a report commissioned by three leading conservation charities, scores of others of our closest relatives are poised to suffer the same fate. It names the top 25 species most in need of help but concludes that 114 primate species are also close to extinction.

World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.

The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.