Report: Earth heading into 'danger zone'; losses of forests too high

High rates of plant and animal extinction, as well as climate change, are pushing the earth into a danger zone for humanity, a report said on Thursday.

An international team of 18 experts, expanding on a 2009 report about "planetary boundaries" for safe human use, also sounded the alarm about the clearance of forests and pollution from nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers.

"I don't think we've broken the planet but we are creating a much more difficult world," said Sarah Cornell, one of the authors at the Stockholm Resilience Center, which led the project as a guide to human exploitation of the earth.