“Rain forest trees can live for centuries, even millennia, so none of us expected things to change too fast. But in just two decades - a wink of time for a thousand year-old tree - the ecosystem has been seriously degraded.”

Unchecked climate change could force up to 72 per cent of the world’s bird species into extinction. “Birds now indicate that global warming has set in motion a powerful chain of effects in ecosystems worldwide.”

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study. Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating. “We have gone through one-third, and we are going to get through the rest.”

The Act could define as a terrorist act any activity causing a business classified as an “animal enterprise” to suffer a profit loss—even if such financial decline is caused by peaceful protests, boycotts, media campaigns or leafleting.

Cate Jenkins, an EPA biochemist, sent a letter to the New York congressional delegation, alleging that the inconsistent official reports about inhalant alkalinity were part of an intentional cover up by government scientists and officials.