Statement by the newly formed World Alliance of Scientists, issued on November 13, 2017. The statement is signed by more than 15,000 scientists across the globe. The statement follows on a first warning by scientists issued in 1992.
Nov 13, 2017 statement here, in pdf format, on World Alliance of Scientists website (nine pages, with graphs and charts). Or read it here on the website of BioScience. (BioScience is a publication the American Institute of Biological Sciences since 1964 and published through Oxford University Press since 2014.)
Website of the World Alliance of Scientists
List of 15,364 signatories by Oct 23, 2017
List of 1,106 endorsers after Oct 23, 2017
News article:
More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issue ‘warning to humanity’
By Nicole Mortillaro, CBC News, Nov 13, 2017
More than 15,000 scientists around the world have issued a global warning: there needs to be change in order to save Earth.
The warning comes 25 years after the first notice in 1992 when a mere 1,500 scientists issued a similar warning. This new cautioning — which gained popularity on Twitter with #ScientistsWarningToHumanity — garnered more than 15,000 signatures.
William Ripple of Oregon State University’s College of Forestry who started the campaign said that he came across the 1992 warning last February and noticed that this year happened to mark the 25th anniversary. Together with his graduate student, Christopher Wolf, he decided to revisit the concerns raised then and collect global data for different variables to show trends over the past 25 years. Ripple found:
- A decline in freshwater availability.
- Unsustainable marine fisheries.
- Ocean dead zones.
- Forest losses.
- Dwindling biodiversity.
- Climate change.
- Population growth.
There was one positive outcome, however: a rapid decline in ozone depletion.
“The trends are alarming, and they speak for themselves,” Ripple said, though he notes the improvement in the ozone hole illustrates that humanity can make change when needed.
After writing a viewpoint article accepted for publication in the journal BioScience, he decided to see if he could once again collect signatures. “I’d never tried that before, so in July I sent [the article] to 40 colleagues of mine, and by the next day, 600 scientists had signed it,” he told CBC News. Within two days, there were 1,200 signatures. Of the more than 15,364 signatures to date, 527 are from Canada, ranking eighth among 184 countries. [There are 21 initial signators from the Russian Federation.]
The goal of the paper is to raise awareness about the fragile state of the planet. “Scientists around the world are very concerned about the state of the world, the environmental situation and climate change,” Ripple said. “So this allows them to have a collective voice.”
Growing middle class and its carbon footprint
“Since 1992, carbon emissions have increased 62 per cent,” Ripple said. “And the global average temperature change has paralleled that. Also since 1992, we have two billion more people on Earth, which is a 35 per cent increase.”
He notes that there has been a rapid decline in fertility rates, but said that likely won’t show up in the data until later.
One of the chief concerns is population growth, but not in terms of numbers. Instead, the focus is on our ecological footprint with an increase in consumerism that puts a toll on the environment. “What is happening is that the global middle class is growing, and it’s growing extremely rapidly,” said co-author Eileen Crist, a professor at Virginia Tech’s Department of Science and Technology in Society.
That comes from the very positive outcome of getting people out of poverty. But there’s a catch. “But what sometimes people miss … they miss what’s happening in the middle,” Crist said. “Which, from an ecological perspective of the planet, is the most significant event: the rapid rise of the global middle class, which is now more than three billion people in the world and it’s expected, by 2050 or so, to rise to five billion people.” It’s the middle class where people begin to increase their carbon footprint: they buy appliances and cars, eat more meat and travel.
One of the potential solutions is to stabilize the population. If we reduce family size, consumption patterns don’t rise as much. And that can be done by empowering girls and women, providing sexual education and education on family planning. “The chief concern isn’t really the human numbers as such. It’s the impact we have,” Crist said.
‘In the throes of a mass extinction event’
There is rising evidence that Earth has entered the sixth mass extinction event brought on by humans. “We are in the throes of a mass extinction event that is anthropogenic,” Crist said. “This is not something we can fix. If we lose 50 to 75 per cent of the species on the planet in this century — which is what scientists are telling us what will occur if we continue to operate as business-as-usual — if this happens, this cannot be fixed.”
When asked whether she’s optimistic that the new petition will have an effect on changes, Crist said that she doesn’t think of it that way. Taking care of the planet is akin to taking care of one’s family. “We take care of our families: our children and our spouses and our parents. When you take care of your family, you don’t do it because you’re optimistic or pessimistic … it’s because that’s what you do.
“Our mandate is that we take care of Earth and earthlings and human beings because we’re all family.”
Related news:
Scientists warn of ‘ecological armageddon’ amid waves of heat and climate refugees, by Dahr Jamail, Truthout.org, Oct 30, 2017 (Dahr Jamail is the lead writer at the ‘Planet or Profit‘ feature on Truthout.org.)
A just transition from climate change and unemployment – a trade union perspective, commentary by Joseph Mathunjwa, published in The Daily Maverick (South Africa), Nov 7, 2017
The latest research of the Alternative Information & Development Centre in South Africa, ‘One Million Climate Jobs: Moving South Africa forward on a low-carbon, wage-led and sustainable path‘ (64-page pamphlet), makes clear that there are potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs in championing low carbon development as a complimentary strategy to a wage-led development path.
(Joseph Mathunjwa is the president of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) in South Africa. He was expelled from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1999. At the time, 3,000 workers at the Douglas Colliery where he worked went on a 10-day underground strike in solidarity with him. The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union was formed shortly afterwards when these workers resigned from the COSATU-affiliated NUM.)
Scientists accused of scaremongering, ‘overheated claims’ with warning to humanity, by Mark Gollom, CBC News, Nov 16, 2017
[There is not a scrap of climate change science reported in this article published by Canada’s state run broadcaster. Rather, the article reverts to the days not so long ago at the CBC of climate news reporting that voiced climate delay and distraction. We read read extensive citations in this latest CBC article from the climate science deniers at the Breakthrough Institute.]