In a paper published in the journal, BioScience, more than 14,000 scientists from 153 countries signed their names to research that warned of an incoming climate emergency.
The paper, led by researchers from Oregon State University, used 31 different planetary variables that tell how the earth is holding up in the face of humanity’s insistence on draining natural resources and pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The list of checks includes surface temperature levels, rainforest health, and glacial ice levels, along with directly human-controlled factors like the health of the global economy and the availability of fossil fuel subsidies.
According to the paper, 18 of the 31 variables have reached record levels with the density of glacial ice at its lowest in more than 70 years, according to the report. Greenhouse gas emissions have peaked to an all-time high, despite appearing to have leveled off in 2019.
Experts have warned that, even with goals of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions will likely continue to rise through at least 2040.
One positive from the report is that fossil fuel subsidies are dropping to record low levels.
While there is still an estimated $181bn available to oil and gas firms and resource exploiters, it’s a 42 per cent decline from the amount that was available in 2019.
Globally, renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, are now a cheaper option globally than coal.
The paper is an update on a similar research conducted in 2019, which amassed signatures from more than 11,000 scientists. In the time since that paper was initially published, the world has suffered significantly from climate change.
In 2020, an estimated $63bn in damage and $268bn economic loss was caused by natural disasters.
Those events, along with the declining state of health for some of the planet’s most important indicators, encouraged more than 3,000 scientists to join onto the latest iteration of the warning letter.
Source: Punch
