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Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’ (Global)
Updated: Dec 3, 2019
“We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” it states. “To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.”
There is no time to lose, the scientists say: “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.”
“A broader set of indicators should be monitored, including human population growth, meat consumption, tree-cover loss, energy consumption, fossil-fuel subsidies and annual economic losses to extreme weather events,” said co-author Thomas Newsome, of the University of Sydney.
They set out a series of urgently needed actions:
○Use energy far more efficiently and apply strong carbon taxes to cut fossil fuel use
○Stabilise global population – currently growing by 200,000 people a day – using ethical
approaches such as longer education for girls
○End the destruction of nature and restore forests and mangroves to absorb CO2
○Eat mostly plants and less meat, and reduce food waste
○Shift economic goals away from GDP growth
A warning of the dangers of pollution and a looming mass extinction of wildlife on Earth, also led by Ripple, was published in 2017. It was supported by more than 15,000 scientists and read out in parliaments from Canada to Israel. It came 25 years after the original “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” in 1992, which said: “A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.”
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