World Scientists Declare Climate Emergency

By Sunny Lewis

CORVALLIS, Oregon, November 14, 2019 (Maximpact.com News) – A global coalition of more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries says “untold human suffering” is unavoidable without deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other factors related to climate change.

“Despite 40 years of major global negotiations, we have continued to conduct business as usual and have failed to address this crisis,” said Dr. William Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology in the Oregon State University College of Forestry. “Climate change has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected.”

In a paper published November 4 in the journal “BioScience,” Dr. Ripple along with more than 11,000 scientist signatories, declares a climate emergency, present graphics showing trends as vital signs against which to measure progress, and provide a set of effective mitigating actions.

“Mitigating and adapting to climate change while honoring the diversity of humans entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems,” the paper states.

“We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern,” the scientists write. “Governmental bodies are making climate emergency declarations. Schoolchildren are striking. Ecocide lawsuits are proceeding in the courts. Grassroots citizen movements are demanding change, and many countries, states and provinces, cities, and businesses are responding. As an Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision makers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future.”

The graphs of vital signs in the paper illustrate several key climate-change indicators and factors over the last 40 years, since scientists from 50 nations met at the First World Climate Conference in Geneva in 1979.

In recent decades, multiple other global assemblies have agreed that urgent action is essential, but greenhouse gas emissions are still rapidly rising. Other ominous signs from human activities include sustained increases in per-capita meat production, global tree cover loss and number of airline passengers.

There are six areas in which the 11,000 scientists warn humanity should take immediate action to slow down the effects of a warming planet:

• Energy. Implement massive conservation practices; replace fossil fuels with low-carbon renewables; leave remaining stocks of fossil fuels in the ground; eliminate subsidies to fossil fuel companies; and impose carbon fees that are high enough to restrain the use of fossil fuels.
• Short-lived pollutants. Swiftly cut emissions of methane, soot, hydrofluorocarbons and other short-lived climate pollutants; doing so has the potential to reduce the short-term warming trend by more than 50% over the next few decades.
• Nature. Restore and protect ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, peatlands, wetlands and mangroves, and allow a larger share of these ecosystems to reach their ecological potential for sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas.
• Food. Eat more plants and consume fewer animal products. The dietary shift would significantly reduce emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases and free up agricultural lands for growing human food rather than livestock feed. Reducing food waste is also critical – the scientists say at least one-third of all food produced ends up as garbage.
• Economy. Convert the economy to one that is carbon free to address human dependence on the biosphere and shift goals away from the growth of gross domestic product and the pursuit of affluence. Curb exploitation of ecosystems to maintain long-term biosphere sustainability.
• Population. Stabilize a global human population that is increasing by more than 200,000 people a day, using approaches that ensure social and economic justice.

There are some encouraging signs, the scientists say, including decreases in global birth rates and decelerated forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon, and

increases in wind and solar power, but even those indications are not enough to control the warming climate.

The decline in birth rates has slowed over the last 20 years, for instance, and the pace of Amazon forest loss appears to be starting to increase again.

“Global surface temperature, ocean heat content, extreme weather and its costs, sea level, ocean acidity, and area burned in the United States are all rising,” Dr. Ripple said. “Globally, ice is rapidly disappearing as demonstrated by decreases in minimum summer Arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and glacier thickness. All of these rapid changes highlight the urgent need for action.”

Joining Ripple and Christopher Wolf, a postdoctoral scholar in the OSU College of Forestry, as authors are Thomas Newsome of the University of Sydney, Phoebe Barnard of the Conservation Biology Institute and the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and William Moomaw of Tufts University.

More information on the project, the list of signatories and the Alliance of World Scientists is available here.

Two years ago, Dr. Ripple led an international team of researchers in producing an article published in “BioScience” titled, “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice.” It was signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 184 countries.

That warning came with steps that can be taken to reverse negative trends, but the authors suggested it may take a groundswell of public pressure to convince political leaders to take corrective actions.

Since 1992, when more than 1,700 scientists, including a majority of the living Nobel laureates in the sciences, signed a “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), global trends have worsened.

Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, says communities of color, Indigenous communities, and low-income communities across the United States are the ones bearing the brunt of the climate-denial policies of the Donald Trump presidency.

“These communities have always borne disproportionate impacts from environmental problems. But the Trump administration is dismantling environmental and public-health policies, and the science these policies depend on, at an unprecedented rate – exacerbating existing inequities and opening the door to even greater harm,” warns the UCS in an October 23 statement.

The Trump administration is also shutting community voices out of the policymaking process and denying communities critical information, making it more difficult for them to advocate for policies that could improve their health and safety.

But, UCS says that disenfranchised communities are pushing back, using information, data, and research expertise to encourage decisionmakers to prioritize policies that safeguard neighborhoods across the nation. UCS is encouraging scientists to partner in these efforts.