Study: Economy and Population Growing Faster Than Humanity's Footprint

A Wildlife Conservation Society press release announces the findings of a new study published in the Nature Communications journal, which finds that humanity's footprint is now growing slower than the economy and population.

Specifically, the "study finds that while the global population grew 23 percent and the global economy grew 153 percent between 1993 and 2009, the global human footprint grew only 9 percent," according to the press release.

Despite that seeming good news, the study still has plenty of bad news to go around. According to its findings, three-quarters of the planet has been altered, while "97 percent of species-rich regions are seriously altered."

Researchers from the University of Northern British Columbia, the University of Queensland, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and six other universities completed the study.