by From Barry Gills and Jamie Morgan We live in a time of Climate Emergency. Nevertheless, our collective actions do not yet approximate a real understanding nor fully appropriate actions. We are not yet acting as if we are facing an urgent and life threatening Emergency. What does ‘Climate Emergency’ actually mean? According to David Attenborough: It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies. (Attenborough, Our Planet) History is written later, but the future is written now. Perhaps the central message of contemporary climate sciences consists in the realization that the entire planet is deeply interconnected. There are
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from Barry Gills and Jamie Morgan
We live in a time of Climate Emergency. Nevertheless, our collective actions do not yet approximate a real understanding nor fully appropriate actions. We are not yet acting as if we are facing an urgent and life threatening Emergency. What does ‘Climate Emergency’ actually mean? According to David Attenborough:
It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies. (Attenborough, Our Planet)
History is written later, but the future is written now. Perhaps the central message of contemporary climate sciences consists in the realization that the entire planet is deeply interconnected. There are no isolated ecosystems. There are no ecosystems that are safe from the effects of climate change. All life on this planet is profoundly interrelated. What happens in one area of the globe has far reaching, but as yet insufficiently understood, effects upon and consequences for even far distant regions. . . .
In other words, the present Global Climate Emergency demands a profound historical transformation of our civilization. We have not only been pouring greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere; we have been collectively exceeding the regenerative capacity of the earth’s natural resources and ecological systems. Earth Overshoot Day, the day in the annual cycle when humanity’s demands for resources exceeds the capacity for regeneration of those resources, has advanced by two whole months over the past twenty years. This year Earth Overshoot Day took place on 29 July 2019. It now requires the equivalent of 1.75 planets to sustain us. Humanity is damaging the whole system upon which our lives, and that of all other species depends.
Global Climate Emergency: after COP24, climate science, urgency, and the threat to humanity