Emergency on Planet Earth
Whilst not universally true to say the entire planet has recognised the imminent danger of climate change, it is fair to say that momentum for a consensus is definitely growing and the pace is picking up. The first RAO Global event took place with Extinction Rebellion outside the door. Literally and figuratively. Greta Thunberg had inspired young people from around the globe to stand up and say ‘enough’ The people who took over the whole of Westminster Square were and extremely civilised and multi-generational bunch and indeed, one of our speakers, Knut Kjaer (Founder of the Worlds largest SWF Norges) picked up a leaflet on his way through, and shared details of the conversation he had with them. A very civilised bunch as I say and reflected in this considered - but terrifying - report they commissioned and have just released to the wider public. Don’t read it and weep. Read it and do something. Please. For all our sakes.
Emergency on Planet Earth
Written by Dr Emily Grossman with the support of the XR Scientists community. Fact-checked and reviewed by a wide range of experts in relevant fields - both from within the XR Scientists community and external to it.
This guide is also available on the Extinction Rebellion UK website. See here for a selection of key facts from this guide. To save this guide as a PDF, select File -> Download -> PDF Document.
Last updated 1st September 2020
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The science is clear
We are facing an unprecedented global emergency
We must act now
“We are in a planetary emergency.”
Professor James Hansen, Former Director NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
“This is an emergency and for emergency situations we need emergency action.”
Ban Ki-Moon, Former UN Secretary-General
"The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the Second World War."
Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Economist, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
“Based on sober scientific analysis, we are deeply within a climate emergency state but people are not aware of it.”
Professor Hans Schellnhuber, Founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
“There is sufficient evidence to draw the most fundamental of conclusions: now is the time to declare a state of planetary emergency. The point is not to admit defeat, but to match the risk with the necessary action to protect the global commons for our own future.”
Professor Johan Rockstrom, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
“Climate change will lead to battles for food.”
Jim Yong Kim, Former President of The World Bank
“Climate change is the greatest security threat of the 21st century,”
Maj Gen Munir Muniruzzaman (Retd.), chairman of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change
“You have to understand, this is also a crisis for the world. The fact is that if the poor are suffering today, then the rich will also suffer tomorrow.”
Dr Sunita Narain, Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment
“Climate change is moving faster than we are - and its speed has provoked a sonic boom SOS across our world. We face a direct existential threat.”
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General
"We have all the resources we need to deal with this. There is nothing magical about reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We just don’t have the political or economic will to do this.”
Professor Stephan Harrison, Professor of Climate and Environmental Change, University of Exeter
“Listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, who suffer the most. The urgent need for interventions can no longer be postponed.”
Pope Francis
“The future of the human race is now at stake.”
Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury
Introduction
Humanity is facing a crisis unprecedented in its history. A crisis that, unless immediately addressed, threatens to catapult us towards the destruction of all we hold dear, our planet’s ecosystems and the future of generations to come. This crisis has been caused by human activities and we have to stop making it worse or we will face catastrophe that we cannot think our way out of, invent our way out of or buy our way out of. In one way or another, it will affect every one of us and everything we love.
The science is clear: the world is heating and the breakdown of our environment has begun. Even now, warmer temperatures are wreaking havoc, causing an increase in extreme weather, floods, storms and droughts - along with rising sea levels, heat stress in our oceans and degradation of our soils. Extreme weather events are having devastating impacts on agriculture and destroying homes, costing taxpayers billions of dollars and leaving millions of people in need of humanitarian aid.
If we keep going as we are, the coming years will bring more wildfires, unpredictable super storms and scorching heatwaves. Rising sea levels and droughts could render vast tracts of land uninhabitable through flooding and desertification, putting food supplies at risk. Receding glaciers threaten to cut off fresh water supplies for millions. Mass migration and famine are likely to take us towards civil unrest and ultimately war, raising the terrifying possibility of societal collapse.
But that’s not all. Around the world, biodiversity is being annihilated at a terrifying rate. Population sizes of thousands of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have fallen by 60% since the 1970s. We are losing our crop-pollinating insects and soil-rejuvenating earthworms. Species are going extinct 100 to 1,000 times faster than they would be doing naturally. Many scientists say we are now entering the Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction event, with one million species threatened with extinction - many within decades. Only this time it’s our fault. The consequences will be catastrophic if we do not act swiftly.
Millions of our trees are being felled to feed the ever-increasing demands for palm oil, clothes and meat. Our soils are being degraded through deforestation and intensive agriculture. We are running out of raw materials and using up our resources. Our rivers are being poisoned and our seas are acidifying and filling up with plastic. The air is so toxic that it kills millions each year.
As Sir David Attenborough put it: “We are facing a man-made disaster on a global scale.”
These climate and ecological crises can no longer be ignored or denied. Yet in spite of promises from governments, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise steeply and biodiversity loss shows no sign of slowing.
In November 2019, a group of more than 13,000 scientists from 153 countries declared “clearly and unequivocally that the Earth is facing a climate emergency” and that without deep and lasting changes, the world’s people face "untold human suffering".
The time has come to take radical action. The future of our children, and our grandchildren, is at stake.
This horrifying narrative sounds almost too unbelievable to be true. Can it really be as terrifying as all that?
We hear so many conflicting opinions and reports – how do we know for sure what is true? Can we really be sure that the world is warming any more than it has in the past? And even if it is, are we certain that humans are to blame? Are species really going extinct at such high rates? And even if they are, why does this matter to us? Are things really going to get worse? If so, how much worse? And how soon? And what can we do about it?
Over the following sections, we, an expert group of science writers, climate scientists and ecologists, most of whom are members of the Scientists for Extinction Rebellion community, explain simply what’s really going on on our planet today. We present clear and unequivocal evidence - backed up by the latest research - that we are indeed in a state of planetary emergency, that human activities are to blame for this crisis, and that the arguments often used by skeptics or deniers to contest this fact are simply not true and are designed to avoid action.
We also provide clear evidence that our governments are not doing nearly enough to address the crisis. And we explain why, without bold and radical action within the next few years, the impacts of this emergency will be catastrophic and irreversible, leading to incalculable suffering and loss of life.
We show that the time has come to take radical action. That the future of our planet is at stake. And that we cannot afford to wait another second.
Contents
Part 1: Back to the start… How did we get into this climate mess and is it really that bad? 9
How can we be so sure that the Earth is heating? 9
Why should we care about a few degrees of heating? 12
Hasn’t the Earth been hotter in the past? 13
What exactly are greenhouse gases and what is the greenhouse effect? 15
Can we be certain that humans are causing global heating? 17
Haven’t natural fluctuations in carbon dioxide affected the Earth’s temperature? 19
What’s happened in the past few thousand years? 21
What’s happened in the past 150 years? 21
What are greenhouse gas emissions like today? 23
We have been warned over and over! 24
What is already happening to our weather? 27
Longer and more intense heatwaves 29
Longer and harsher droughts 31
More extreme storms and floods 33
What is global heating doing to our oceans, coastlines and wildlife? 38
Melting ice and rising seas 38
Loss of homes due to rising seas 41
Impacts of heating on ocean life 42
Impacts of carbon dioxide on ocean life 43
Impacts of heating on land-based wildlife 43
Part 3: The lie of the land… What other damage are we doing to our planet? 46
How are we damaging our land and our waters? 46
Loss of grasslands, mangroves, wetlands and peatlands 52
How are we polluting our waters? 53
How are we polluting our air? 54
How are we destroying our wildlife? 55
Why should we care about the loss of our wildlife? 55
Loss of fish, whales and dolphins 58
Part 4: Sick, thirsty, hungry and homeless… What knock-on effects are we already seeing? 64
Health threats from extreme weather 64
Increased spread of diseases 65
Health threats from air pollution 67
Health threats from intensive agriculture 68
Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable 68
Impacts on global food production 69
Impacts on water availability 71
Mass displacement and threats to safety, human rights and our global economy 72
Part 5: Too hot to handle… Where are we heading? 75
How hot is too hot? The promises of the Paris Agreement 75
How hot is it likely to get and when? 76
The additional risks of feedback loops 79
Drying soils and mega-heatwaves 82
How tipping points might make things even worse… 83
The compound risk of multiple tipping points 87
What will our world look like in 2050 if we don’t take radical action now? 89
2050: More intense heatwaves and forest fires 89
2050: More intense storms, floods and hurricanes 91
2050: Increased droughts and water shortages 91
2050: Rising seas and increased coastal flooding 93
2050: More devastating loss of wildlife on land and in the oceans 94
2050: Further reductions in food production 95
2050: More devastating impacts on human health 97
2050: Poverty and financial instability 98
2050: Social instability and conflict 98
What will our world look like by the end of the century? 99
2100: Flooding and mass migration 100
2100: Impacts on human health, food and water 101
What will our world look like by the end of the century if we reach 4°C of heating? 102
4°C of heating: Extreme heat 103
4°C of heating: Rising seas, flooding and mass displacement 105
4°C of heating: Wildlife loss 105
4°C of heating: Reductions in food production 106
Not worth the risk: why we need to apply the Precautionary Principle 106
Part 6: Enough is enough… How are our governments letting us down? 109
What are governments ‘supposed’ to be doing to address the ecological crisis? 109
What are governments ‘supposed’ to be doing to address the climate crisis? 110
It’s not just WHEN we get to net zero, it’s HOW 111
Why net zero by 2050 isn’t actually fast enough 112
Why richer countries need to get to net zero MUCH sooner than 2050 113
How our governments are making the climate crisis worse, not better! 114
Emissions from shipping and aviation are on course to reach dangerous levels 115
Governments are still subsidising fossil fuels 115
Governments are approving NEW fossil fuel projects 116
Banks are financing the fossil fuel industry 118
The way that governments invest money in emerging from the coronavirus crisis is crucial 118
Is the UK government doing enough? 118
UK emissions are falling - but only in some sectors 119
UK figures don’t account for aviation, shipping or embedded emissions 119
UK emissions are not falling nearly fast enough 120
The UK government is missing its own targets 121
The UK needs to be getting to net zero by 2025, not 2050 122
The UK government is making things worse, not better! 123
The UK government is subsidising fossil fuels 123
The UK government is approving NEW fossil fuel projects 124
UK banks are investing in fossil fuels 124
Part 7: Act now… So what do we do? 127
How long do we have and is it already too late? 127
So what needs to happen now? 127
Why individual action isn’t enough 128
The urgent need for collective action 129
Testimonials: What other scientists, political voices and readers are saying about this guide 147
In the media: Talks, articles, interviews and short films about this guide 149
Part 1: Back to the start… How did we get into this climate mess and is it really that bad?
How can we be so sure that the Earth is heating?
Read the full document here