The Climate & Nature Emergency
The science is clear: we face an unprecedented global climate and nature emergency.
Zeke Hausfather is a climatologist and research scientist with Berkeley Earth: an independent, non-profit, environmental science data and analysis organisation . Here is what he had to say about the temperature increase in September 2023:
“This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist, absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.”
This is hardly sounds scientific but that’s the point: for a scientist to use language like that just emphasises how extreme the emergency has become. Unfortunately since then the temperature has continued to rise. We should be in no doubt about the cause of temperature increase: global heating is largely caused by increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of humans burning fossil fuels.
The effects of this emergency include floods, wildfires, extreme weather, mass loss of wildlife, crop failure and the mass displacement of people and loss of life. This is not a distant prospect - these effects are being suffered right now, and will continue to be disproportionately suffered, by those who have done the very least to cause the crisis. The chart below shows the gaps between what’s necessary, what’s being promised, and what’s actually being delivered in terms of real world policies.
[1]
The amount of heating may not sound much, but there is a real danger of it leading to tipping points and feedback loops. These are irreversible domino effects beyond which there is little we can do to control run-away warming. Plus, right now, every 0.1 degree of warming places 100 million people in unliveable temperatures. [2]
On top of this, many scientists believe that habitat destruction and biodiversity loss is equally, if not even more, important and that we are right now in planet earth’s sixth mass extinction, driven by unsustainable human activities.
To have any effect on slowing down global heating and loss of nature, we need urgent systemic and long-term changes to how we do things. XR’s purpose is to highlight the fact that our window of opportunity is closing rapidly and compel those in power to act.
References:
[1]: https://climateactiontracker.org/
[2]: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/74/12/812/7808595
More information:
If you want to know more about the science of climate and ecological breakdown, visit our webpage Emergency on Planet Earth. Dr Emily Grossman (with the support of the XR Scientists community and a wide range of experts) lays out the facts.
This 50 minute video, in two parts, last updated Mar 2023, explains what is happening and what we can do about it.