Record heat waves, droughts, floods and melting: in 2012 our planet’s weather went to extremes it had never gone before. This led to a string of costly and destabilizing environmental disasters across the globe.

For instance, the Pacific Northwest has seen oyster larvae fatality rates of 80 percent in commercial hatcheries due to ocean acidification. In colder waters, ice coverage on the Arctic Ocean shrunk to 1.32 million square miles in September, the lowest ever recorded.  

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