World scientists warn of climate emergency

The statement below was signed by over 11,000 world scientists and published in Bioscience on November 5. It should be read carefully by all of us who are increasingly concerned about the worsening climate crisis. The text has been edited slightly to reduce its length. There are multiple graphs and charts in the original article, which should be consulted for more detail. It’s long–but well worth reading.

Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to “tell it like it is.”  On the basis of this obligation, we declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequiv­ocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency .

Exactly 40 years ago, scientists from 50 nations met at the First World Climate Conference (in Geneva 1979) and agreed that alarming trends for climate change made it urgently neces­sary to act. Since then, similar alarms have been made through the 1992 Rio Summit, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the 2015 Paris Agreement, as well as scores of other global assemblies and scientists’ explicit warnings of insuf­ficient progress. Yet greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are still rapidly rising, with increasingly damaging effects on the Earth’s cli­mate. An immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis.

Most public discussions on climate change are based on global surface temperature only, an inadequate mea­sure to capture the breadth of human activities and the real dangers stem­ming from a warming planet. Policymakers and the public now urgently need access to a set of indicators that convey the effects of human activities on GHG emis­sions and the consequent impacts on climate, our environment, and society. Building on prior work, we present a suite of graphical vital signs of climate change over the last 40 years for human activi­ties that can affect GHG emissions and change the climate, as well as actual climatic impacts.

The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle. The most affluent countries are mainly responsible for the his­torical GHG emissions and generally have the greatest per capita emissions. In the present article, we show general patterns, mostly at the global scale, because there are many climate efforts that involve individ­ual regions and countries. Our vital signs are designed to be useful to the public, policymakers, the busi­ness community, and those working to implement the Paris climate agree­ment, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets.

Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases in both human and rumi­nant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domes­tic product, global tree cover loss, fossil fuel consumption, the number of air passengers carried, carbon diox­ide (CO2) emissions, and per capita CO2 emissions since 2000. Encouraging signs include decreases in global fer­tility (birth) rates, decel­erated forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon, increases in the consumption of solar and wind power, institutional fossil fuel divestment of more than US$7 tril­lion, and the proportion of GHG emissions covered by car­bon pricing. However, the decline in human fertility rates has substantially slowed during the last 20 years, and the pace of forest loss in Brazil’s Amazon has now started to increase again.

Consumption of solar and wind energy has increased 373% per decade, but in 2018, it was still 28 times smaller than fossil fuel consumption (com­bined gas, coal, oil). As of 2018, approximately 14.0% of global GHG emissions were covered by carbon pricing, but the global emissions-weighted aver­age price per tonne of carbon dioxide was only around US$15.25. A much higher carbon fee price is needed. Annual fossil fuel subsidies to energy companies have been fluctuating, and because of a recent spike, they were greater than US$400 billion in 2018.

Especially disturbing are concur­rent trends in the vital signs of climatic impacts. Three abundant atmospheric GHGs (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) continue to increase (and there is an ominous 2019 spike in CO2), as does global surface tempera­ture. Globally, ice has been rapidly disappearing, evidenced by declining trends in minimum sum­mer Arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and glacier thick­ness worldwide. Ocean heat content, ocean acidity, sea level, area burned in the United States, and extreme weather and associated damage costs have all been trending upward. Climate change is predicted to greatly affect marine, freshwater, and terrestrial life, from plankton and corals to fishes and for­ests. These issues highlight the urgent need for action.

Despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, with few exceptions, we have generally conducted business as usual and have largely failed to address this predicament. The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threat­ening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity. Especially worrisome are potential irreversible climate tipping points and nature’s reinforcing feedbacks (atmospheric, marine, and terrestrial) that could lead to a catastrophic “hothouse Earth,” well beyond the control of humans.

These climate chain reactions could cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable.

To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live, in ways that improve the vital signs summarized by our graphs. Economic and popu­lation growth are among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion; therefore, we need bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies. We suggest six critical and interrelated steps (in no particular order) that gov­ernments, businesses, and the rest of humanity can take to lessen the worst effects of climate change. These are important steps but are not the only actions needed or possible.

Energy

The world must quickly implement massive energy efficiency and conser­vation practices and must replace fos­sil fuels with low-carbon renewables (and other cleaner sources of energy if safe for people and the environment. We should leave remaining stocks of fossil fuels in the ground and should carefully pur­sue effective negative emissions using technology such as carbon extraction from the source and capture from the air and especially by enhancing natural systems. Wealthier countries need to support poorer nations in transitioning away from fossil fuels. We must swiftly elim­inate subsidies for fossil fuels and use effective and fair policies for steadily escalating carbon prices to restrain their use.

Short-lived pollutants

We need to promptly reduce the emis­sions of short-lived climate pollutants, including methane, black carbon (soot), and hydrofluorocar­bons (HFCs). Doing this could slow climate feedback loops and poten­tially reduce the short-term warming trend by more than 50% over the next few decades while saving millions of lives and increasing crop yields due to reduced air pollution.

Nature

We must protect and restore Earth’s ecosystems. Phytoplankton, coral reefs, forests, savannas, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, soils, mangroves, and sea grasses contribute greatly to sequestra­tion of atmospheric CO2. Marine and terrestrial plants, animals, and micro­organisms play significant roles in car­bon and nutrient cycling and storage. We need to quickly curtail habitat and biodiversity loss, protecting the remaining primary and intact forests, especially those with high carbon stores and other forests with the capacity to rapidly sequester carbon (proforestation), while increas­ing reforestation and afforestation where appropriate at enormous scales. Although available land may be limit­ing in places, up to a third of emissions reductions needed by 2030 for the Paris agreement (less than 2°C) could be obtained with these natural climate solutions.

Food

Eating mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of ani­mal products, especially ruminant livestock, can improve human health and signifi­cantly lower GHG emissions (including methane). Moreover, this will free up crop­lands for growing much-needed human plant food instead of livestock feed, while releasing some grazing land to support natural climate solutions. Cropping practices such as minimum tillage that increase soil carbon are vitally important. We need to drastically reduce the enormous amount of food waste around the world.

Economy

Excessive extraction of materials and overexploitation of ecosystems, driven by economic growth, must be quickly curtailed to maintain long-term sus­tainability of the biosphere. We need a carbon-free economy that explic­itly addresses human dependence on the biosphere and policies that guide economic decisions accordingly. Our goals need to shift from GDP growth and the pursuit of affluence toward sustaining ecosystems and improving human well-being by prioritizing basic needs and reducing inequality.

Population

Still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year, or more than 200,000 per day the world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity. There are proven and effective policies that strengthen human rights while lowering fertility rates and lessening the impacts of population growth on GHG emissions and biodiversity loss. These policies make family-planning services available to all people, remove barriers to their access and achieve full gender equity, including primary and secondary education as a global norm for all, especially girls and young women.

Conclusions

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. We are encouraged by a recent surge of concern. 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 the Alliance of World Scientists, we stand ready to assist decision-mak­ers in a just transition to a sustainable and equitable future. We urge wide­spread use of vital signs, which will better allow policymakers, the pri­vate sector, and the public to under­stand the magnitude of this crisis, track progress, and realign priorities for alleviating climate change. The good news is that such transforma­tive change, with social and economic justice for all, promises far greater human well-being than does business as usual. We believe that the prospects will be greatest if decision-makers and all of humanity promptly respond to this warning and declaration of a cli­mate emergency and act to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home.

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