Fire

• "I have a reputation as a master chef in Indian curries," explains brand owner Harry "Guru" Khanna, "In fact, people call me 'The Guru of Indian Curries.'
• I wanted to find a perfect way to produce the sauce base and preserve it without the need for additives or chemicals."
• He wanted to offer his audience the best Indian culinary experience possible, which inevitably boiled down to the sauce.
• With this quartet of objectives in mind, Khanna invested years of his life and his savings into developing the perfect pre-prepared Indian sauce.

Fireworks have become a fixture of many celebrations around the world, from weddings to national holidays. But there are many among us, including the furry, feathered and finned, who feel fear with every thundering boom. Animal caretakers, wildlife rehabilitators and fire services see firsthand the damaging — and sometimes fatal — effects whenever and wherever fireworks are deployed.

Real risks for animals

• Read more:
  Five ways to help your pets cope with fireworks

  Studies suggest up to 50 per cent of dogs are afraid of fireworks.

• Frightened animals awakened from sleep or startled from a state of relaxation will hide, pace, shake, cry or flee, unable to process what is going on or find a safe haven.
• It’s not only animals who are at risk either.

Wild animals’ responses

• The dangers are serious for wild animals like birds, squirrels, frogs and fish too.
• During fireworks explosions, nearby resting birds will flee in fear en masse from trees and ponds, and fly off into the night sky.
• Because fireworks are launched at night, the full effects on wild animals are challenging to document.

Risks to people

• When set off, fireworks can release toxic chemicals and pollute the environment.
• And during warnings of the potential of an intense and dangerous fire season, the incendiary risks of fireworks are even more dire.

Harm is nothing to celebrate

• Since backyard and community-run fireworks continue in most places, concerned animal caretakers should take steps to protect their animals.
• But individual actions aren’t enough to mitigate the damaging effects of fireworks on domesticated and wild animals.
• Governments ought to ensure celebrations consider the well-being of humans and other animals alike.

• These products can fail to extinguish a fire, which could lead to serious injury and death.
• Specifically, the identified products can fail to properly disperse fire suppressing chemicals and fail to extinguish a fire.
• The fire extinguisher balls were sold to consumers on Amazon.com.
• Consumers should stop using them and dispose of these products at either a local fire department or a hazardous waste disposal facility.

• That the resilience of the Earth system meant nature would always provide.
• This is the first time an assessment of boundaries has quantified the harms to people from changes to the Earth system.
• “Safe” means boundaries maintaining stability and resilience of our planetary systems on which we rely.
• We assessed factors such as tipping point risks, declines in Earth system functions, historical variability and effects on people.

So, what did we find?

• Climate boundary – keep warming to 1℃ We know the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5℃ avoids a high risk of triggering dangerous climate tipping points.
• At 1.5℃, hundreds of millions of people could be exposed to average annual temperatures over 29℃, which is outside the human climate niche and can be fatal.
• To safeguard these services, we need 50 to 60% of the world’s land to have largely intact natural ecosystems.
• Locally, we need about 20-25% of each square kilometre of farms, towns, cities or other human-dominated landscapes to contain largely intact natural ecosystems.
• While this needs to be reduced in many countries, in other parts of the world fertiliser use can safely increase.
• We must significantly reduce these pollutants to safer levels – under 15 micrograms per cubic metre of air.

We must act

• To translate these boundaries to actions will require urgent support from government to create regulatory and incentive-based systems to drive the changes needed.
• Ben Stewart-Koster receives funding from Future Earth for his role in the Earth Commission under the Global Commons Alliance.
• Syezlin Hasan receives funding from Future Earth for her role in the Earth Commission under the Global Commons Alliance.
• The Earth Commission is also supported by the Global Challenges Foundation and the Frontiers Research Foundation.