Climate change ‘has dented global agricultural productivity’

See article in SciDevNet by Carmina de la Luz: https://www.scidev.net/global/news/climate-change-has-dented-global-agricultural-productivity/

Bullet point summary of article:

• Climate change ‘has slowed global agricultural productivity by 21 per cent’
• Africa and Latin America show the biggest decline, according to study
• Agriculture is becoming ‘more vulnerable to climate change’, despite advances

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Global agricultural productivity has declined by about 21 per cent in the last 60 years as a result of climate change – the equivalent of seven years’ lost production – a study has found.

The decrease was most pronounced in warm regions such as Africa (30 per cent) and Latin America and the Caribbean (26 per cent), according to research published in Nature Climate Change which looked at data from 1961 to 2020.

Small scale farmers in Kenya

The study, by scientists from Cornell, Maryland, and Stanford universities, warns that global agriculture is now becoming even more vulnerable to climate change, despite advances in technology.

Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, professor of applied economics at Cornell University and lead author of the study, told SciDev.Net: “These numbers don’t mean that we are producing less than we did back in 1961 – we’ve actually produced more year after year. Instead, our study is saying is that global agricultural productivity is almost 21 per cent lower than it could have been in a world without climate change,” explained  Ortiz-Bobea.

Researchers analysed annual official records of agricultural productivity in 172 countries, along with data on climate parameters.

This showed them “how much agricultural productivity rose or fell in a given country, if a specific year was warmer, colder, wetter, or drier than normal,” among other variables, Ortiz-Bobea told SciDev.Net.

Once they found this statistical relationship –  known as an econometric model – they put it to the test in both the real world, and a parallel world where anthropogenic (man-made) climate change does not exist.

To avoid bias, researchers kept the alternative world almost the same as the real one, considering the last six decades in both with the same type of economy, the same use of fossil fuels, and even the same greenhouse gas emissions.

“The only difference was that in the fictional world emissions didn’t have the ability to alter the climate,” said Ortiz-Bobea.

When comparing the two worlds, scientists discovered that climate change caused the equivalent of seven years of stagnation in agricultural productivity. This means that the level reached in 2020 is equivalent to the productivity that could have been achieved since 2013 in a world without climate change, according to a press release from Cornell University.

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The full article can be read at the link provided at the beginning of this posting.

New study shows that 2020 Siberian wildfires were caused by climate change

The Financial Times reported this week that dry conditions in 2020 helped the Siberian wildfires to take hold and spread and that it was not an isolated event. Data from Copernicus, the European Union’s earth observation programme, have shown this.

Record high temperatures in the Russian Far East, combined with drought and low moisture levels, created the conditions for extensive wildfire outbreaks, that forced Russia to declare a national emergency last July and deploy its military to help fight the blazes. 

Last year was one of the three warmest years on record, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. The global average surface temperature rose by about 1.2C, compared to the 1850-1900 period. But the heating was not evenly distributed around the planet. It was particularly acute in the Arctic region with a record 38C — the highest temperature ever inside the Arctic Circle — being recorded in Russia’s Yakutia region in June 2020. 

The Financial Times article (24th April 2021) provides a mobile graphic, which shows the wildfires moving around the arctic circle from West to East.

See also, the images of the fires on the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49125391

“Wildfires are ravaging parts of the Arctic, with areas of Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and Canada engulfed in flames and smoke.“

The satellite images show how the plumes of smoke from the fires, many caused by dry storms in hot weather, can be seen from space.

Satellite images of the wildfires and a map of the arctic from the BBC website

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UN declare 2021 as the year for “Climate Action”

World on the verge of climate ‘abyss’, as temperature rise continues: UN chief.

See: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/04/1090072

The Earth’s temperature continues to rise unabated, with 2020 being one of the three warmest years on record, as extreme weather events combine with the COVID-19 pandemic, impacting millions. 

According to the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) flagship State of the Global Climate report, the global average temperature in 2020 was about 1.2-degree Celsius above pre-industrial level.

That figure is “dangerously close” to the 1.5-degree Celsius limit advocated by scientists to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

The six years since 2015, have been the warmest on record, and the decade beginning up to this year, was the warmest ever.

“We are on the verge of the abyss”, Secretary-General António Guterres said at a press conference announcing the findings.

Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General

The stark warning from WMO comes ahead of the virtual Leaders Summit on Climate this week, convened by United States President Joe Biden, to galvanize efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet the targets of the historic 2015 Paris Agreement, agreed by all the nations of the world.

2021, ‘year for action’

The UN chief underscored that 2021, “must be the year for action”, calling for a number of “concrete advances”, before countries gather in Glasgow in November, for COP26 – the 26th session of Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“Countries need to submit ambitious new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that were designed by the Paris Agreement. Their climate plans for the next 10 years must be much more efficient.”

He also urged that climate commitments and plans must be backed with immediate action, and that the trillions of dollars invested by mostly richer nations for domestic COVID-19 recovery, be aligned with the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and that subsidies directed to fossil fuels be shifted to renewable energy.

“Developed countries must lead in phasing out coal – by 2030 in OECD countries, and 2040 elsewhere. No new coal power plants should be built”, Mr. Guterres stressed.

Early warning

The State of the Global Climate report also noted how climate change undermines sustainable development efforts, through a cascading chain of interrelated events that can worsen existing inequalities, as well as raise the potential for feedback loops, perpetuating the deteriorating cycle of climate change.

Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-Secretary, cautioned that the “negative trend” in climate could continue for the coming decades independent of mitigation efforts, calling for greater investments in adaptation.

“The report shows that we have not time to waste. The climate is changing, and the impacts are already too costly for people and the planet. This is the year for action”, he said, calling for all countries to commit to zero emissions by 2050.

“One of the most powerful ways to adapt is to invest in early warning services and weather observing networks. Several less developed countries have major gaps in their observing systems and are lacking state-of-the-art weather, climate and water services”, he highlighted.

Report findings

Amongst its findings, the 2020 WMO report noted that concentrations of the major greenhouse gases continued to increase in 2019 and 2020, with global average for carbon dioxide concentrations having already exceeded 410 parts per million (ppm), with a further warning that if the concentration follows the same pattern as in previous years, it could reach or exceed 414 ppm this year.

WMO also noted that ocean acidification and deoxygenation continued, impacting ecosystems, marine life and fisheries, as well as reducing its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. 

Furthermore, 2019 saw the highest ocean heat level on record, and the trend likely continued in 2020, as did the global mean sea-level rise.

Arctic warning

The report also said that the since the mid-1980s, Arctic air surface temperatures have warmed at least twice as fast as the global average, with “potentially large implications” not only for Arctic ecosystems but also for the global climate, such as thawing permafrost releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

In addition, record low Arctic sea-ice extent were observed in the months of July and October 2020, while the Greenland ice sheet lost approximately 152 gigatonnes of ice, between September 2019 and August 2020.

Extreme weather events were also recorded in several locations globally, with heavy rains and floods, severe and long-term droughts, disastrous storms, and widespread and prolonged wildfires, such as in the US and Australia.

The images above appear on the United Nations news website as part of the report quoted above

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Open Letter to the Prime Minister about the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill

The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
19 April 2021

Dear Prime Minister,
We are writing to you about the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (CEE Bill), which was introduced as a
presentation bill by Caroline Lucas MP on 2 September 2020. The CEE Bill offers the UK an unparalleled
opportunity to provide much needed global leadership in addressing climate-nature breakdown and Earth
system collapse—and to substantively strengthen a number of useful policy and budget commitments that
you, and HM Government as a whole, have made in recent months.
We therefore respectfully request that, as a matter of the utmost urgency, HM Government:

1. Takes up the CEE Bill via the forthcoming Queen’s Speech on 11 May and makes time available during
   the new Session to properly debate the Bill and allow it to progress
2. Adopts the ‘nature clauses’ of the Bill in its positioning at the UN Biodiversity Convention (COP15) in
   October and the ‘climate clauses’ in its positioning for the UN Climate Change Convention (COP26)
   in November.
   We urge you to do so because of the nature and scale of the interlinked global, environmental, economic and

social crises that confront humanity—and because there is no other parliamentary pathway for the House of
Commons to properly debate and endorse the solutions outlined in the CEE Bill now that HM Government
has effectively postponed Friday business and thus private members’ bill agendas.

2021 is an auspicious year for the UK to play a world leading role as host to the G7 in June and co-host for
COP26, and its attendance at COP15. President Biden has already made tackling climate change a top
priority. The new US Administration has shown its substantive commitment by rejoining the 2015 Paris
Agreement and holding a major economies climate summit this week—Earth Day, 22 April—as a precursor to
COP26. President Biden has also committed to a net zero policy programme, of the type pioneered by the
UK. This is a tremendous opportunity in which the UK can leverage the so-called ‘special relationship’ to
create new levels of global ambition on tackling the climate crisis—especially now that the UK has exited the
European Union.

These fortuitous developments can allow the UK to demonstrate to other nations what can and must be
done to tackle the climate-nature crisis—and to forge a new global role in the post-pandemic world. To do
this the UK must first up its own game, and address some glaring weaknesses in our otherwise positive
climate-nature track record; or risk not being taken seriously at all.

While we welcome recent climate and nature policy initiatives from your Administration—including the
diversion of £3 billion of existing funds to nature conservation, the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial
Revolution, your acceptance of the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature and the new emission reduction targets in the
Sixth Carbon Budget and a number of other projects and programmes outlined in HM Government’s response
to the Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC) 2020 Progress Report to Parliament—we must alert you to the
fact that they are not nearly sufficient to ensure that the UK will fulfil its responsibilities under the UN
Biodiversity Convention, the UN Climate Change Convention or the Paris Agreement. Two select
committees in the House of Commons recently echoed this, calling on Ministers to produce more credible
climate plans before COP26 in November.

There is so much more that the UK, and other nations, need to do to effectively address the looming Earth
system crisis. As you may be aware, the Stockholm Resilience Centre has identified nine critical planetary
boundaries related to key Earth-system processes and outcomes that primarily determine the conditions for
life on Earth. Humanity is already transgressing four of these thresholds—those related to climate change,
biodiversity loss, land use change and biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen).
Breaking past one or more of these limits increases the risk of catastrophic Earth system shifts at the
continental to global scale, inevitably causing extreme economic, social and political unrest—threatening the
foundations of civilisation itself. These shifts will be abrupt and sudden; not gradual or manageable.
Climate system disruption and the destruction of natural systems is therefore pushing us towards Earth
system collapse. This forecast has been confirmed by a wide range of authoritative reports by world-leading
scientists to political leaders in recent years. And yet, governments the world over have consistently shied
away from the systemic transformations to the dominant economic growth models that are causing these
existential threats to civilisation—including the UK. However, as the CCC’s Sixth Carbon Budget
demonstrates—as just one of many post-pandemic ‘greening the economy’ development paths, also
highlighted by the Dasgutpa Review—there is no contradiction between lowering emissions, regenerating
nature and stimulating a more prosperous, wealth-creating economy.

We are therefore calling on HM Government to implement the necessary regulatory and fiscal frameworks
to provide a consistent and reliable development trajectory—and to incentivise firms and consumers to work
with your Administration—to deliver the changes required. HM Government’s Nationally Determined
Contribution (NDC) for COP26—committing to reduce emissions by at least 68% by the end of this
decade—is ambitious, but the policies and legislation announced to date will not meet it. When added
together with other nations’ NDCs, it is obvious that planned global emission reductions are nowhere near
sufficient to meet the Paris-compliant 1.5 °C target. The UK cannot persuade other nations to sufficiently
strengthen their own contributions if we are failing ourselves.

The current UK net zero target date of 2050 does not reflect our global responsibility and nor will it motivate
the early action that is needed if the UK’s remaining carbon budget is not to be exhausted long before that
date. Despite the promise shown in the most recent Sixth Carbon Budget, the CCC has established that the
UK’s emission reduction pathway will not meet either our Fourth or Fifth Carbon Budgets—and yet must
achieve 78% emission reductions on 1990 levels by 2035 to be on course for the Sixth. As you will be aware,
these are statutory obligations.

Furthermore, the CCC stated in its 2020 Progress Report that only four of the 21 key indicators that show
progress towards meeting our Fourth and Fifth Budgets—and the 2050 net zero target—were on track to be
achieved. Only two of the 31 milestones for actions recommended by the CCC have been fully achieved, only
partial progress made on 15, and 14 showed no progress at all. Perhaps most worryingly, the UK’s net zero by
2050 target is in itself not strong enough to do our ‘fair share’ to meet the 1.5 °C target set out by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Indeed, the CCC has identified that the UK’s net zero by 2050 plan only gives us a ‘better than 50%’ chance
of staying at or below the 1.5 °C target—and even then only if replicated across the world. We suggest that
the route map set out by the CCC is flawed in three other critical respects, as it:

1. Places an unfair and heavy burden on future generations to deploy unproven negative emission
   technologies—which the CCC characterise as ‘speculative’ and which ‘have very low levels of
   technology readiness, very high costs and significant barriers to social acceptability’
2. Relies on unprecedented shifts in personal behaviour and lifestyle shifts to achieve its emission
   reduction targets, but without convincingly explaining how these may be effectively achieved
3. Assumes a disproportionately large slice of the global carbon budget for the UK to use—which far
   exceeds our ‘fair share’ as determined by the Paris Agreement and Convention principles.

Therefore, and to make this task both easier and more likely in the long run, there is no substitute for early,
deep carbon reductions: HM Government’s date of 2050 is therefore too late to be effective.
According to eminent climate scientists, the UK’s carbon budgets used to determine emission reductions in
the CCC’s route map are two to three times as high as they should be—and the 2050 end date is 10 to 15
years too far away to deliver a fully Paris-compliant decarbonised energy-only economy (including aviation
and shipping). For example, the cumulative emissions implied by CCC’s net zero pathway are approximately
9GtCO₂ (excluding other GHGs). This is 2 to 3 times larger than the recent, peer-reviewed science estimate
of the UK’s fair Paris-compliant energy-economy carbon budget (2.7-3.8GtCO₂ from 2020) from the Tyndall
Centre for Climate Change Research.

In fact, if all nations were similarly to exceed their fair Paris-compliant carbon target, total global emissions
would align with warming closer to 3 °C (than 2 °C). The implications for UK emission reductions are
profound—we must achieve a minimum of 10% emission reductions every year beginning this year, with full
decarbonisation of the energy system across all sectors by 2035-40.

Looking at the UK economy as a whole, the picture is yet more challenging. Starting from a global carbon
budget—with an IPCC estimated 66% chance of limiting climate heating to 1.5 ºC (which is
Paris-compliant)—it is argued that the remaining available carbon budget for the UK is just 2.5GtCO₂. In
order to meet our historical, present-day and future generational obligations to reduce emissions fairly, and
to meet a zero carbon economy by 2050 (while remaining within our Paris-compliant carbon budget), the UK
must achieve absolute reductions of more than 95% of carbon emissions by 2030-35. If the UK follows a
non-linear emissions reduction development pathway, with year-on-year constant percentage reduction
rates, this goal is achievable. We suggest that the problem is not a lack of public support, money, technology,
land use or lifestyle solutions; the problem is the delay in implementation.

As you know, every day, month and year counts in this mission. The longer we delay cutting emissions by
sufficient year-on-year reductions which truly reflect our global carbon budget ‘fair share’, the harder it
becomes to cut greater carbon loads in the years to come—and the more likely we help precipitate Earth
system collapse, storing up ever more serious and expensive problems here at home—from debilitating
extreme weather events, sea level rise and severe flooding.

The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill offers a clear, evidenced-based statutory framework, which will
fulfil the UK’s international climate and nature responsibilities and positively steer public and private sector
investment, procurement and purchasing decisions towards shifting to a fairer, more prosperous and
sustainable society. This is because the CEE Bill sets a viable pathway for HM Government to:

1. Take a joined-up approach to addressing the climate and ecological emergencies
2. Ensure that the UK does its fair share to limit global heating to 1.5 ºC, in line with the Paris
   Agreement—taking responsibility for its entire greenhouse gas footprint, including domestic and
   imported emissions from UK consumption—as well as emissions from international aviation and shipping
3. Protect nature along UK supply chains and actively conserve the environment within the UK by restoring
   abundant, biodiverse habitats and healthy ecosystems
4. Establish a representative Citizens’ Assembly to advise Ministers and Parliament on a strategy to ensure
   a just and fair transition to a carbon-free society.
   
5. As you know, every year the World Economic Forum ranks the ten greatest risks to humanity, gauged by how
   likely and how severe their knock-on impacts will be. As development impacts and climate heating cross the
   Earth’s system tipping points, change will be sudden, abrupt and catastrophic. In recognition of the dire
   position humanity finds itself in, a majority of UK local authorities have declared climate emergencies. Over
   230 councils have passed motions setting emission reduction targets of net zero by 2030 or earlier—and
   over 200 Councils are supporting actions to help achieve the 1.5ºC target. Almost 50 of these authorities are
   also supporting the CEE Bill, alongside 118 Parliamentarians across the House of Commons and the House of
   Lords.
   
   The UK garnered widespread applause at home and abroad for passing the Climate Change Act 2008,
   inspiring other nations to set and live up to serious climate commitments. Once again we need a world
   leading statutory framework to guide and motivate collaborative action across all sectors of the economy
   and society. We firmly believe that, in this pivotal year, you have an unprecedented opportunity to do so
   again by committing HM Government to implement the additional, essential measures required to meet our
   national and international biodiversity and climate obligations.

The UK garnered widespread applause at home and abroad for passing the Climate Change Act 2008,
inspiring other nations to set and live up to serious climate commitments. Once again we need a world
leading statutory framework to guide and motivate collaborative action across all sectors of the economy
and society. We firmly believe that, in this pivotal year, you have an unprecedented opportunity to do so
again by committing HM Government to implement the additional, essential measures required to meet our
national and international biodiversity and climate obligations.

Prime Minister, it is for these reasons that we respectfully urge you to take up the CEE Bill and allow for full
parliamentary scrutiny at the earliest opportunity. Your support will be a fitting way to demonstrate to the
world what is needed to address the climate and nature crises at COP15, as host of the G7 summit and as
co-host at COP26—and to meaningfully develop the important steps that you have taken to date following
on from the UK Parliament’s climate emergency resolution in 2019.

It is said that this Government’s approach is defined, not by the words you use, but by the actions you take.

We respectfully call on you to take the necessary actions outlined above and adopt, introduce and allow the
CEE Bill to progress through Parliament.

We, the supporters of the CEE Bill Alliance, are ready and willing to work with you—and we look forward to
hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

(names supplied)

Full details of letter available at:

https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ceebill/pages/394/attachments/original/1618867541/Open_letters_to_Boris_Johnson_MP___CEE_Bill_Alliance.pdf?1618867541

Changes to the Monsoon season in Asia

Studies are showing that a more chaotic monsoon season are set to cause havoc across a huge and densely populated swathe of the planet. The great South Asian summer monsoon will become both stronger and less reliable. All of these studies have been described in a post by Tim Radford on his website Climate News Network, whom we acknowledge for the following:

For generations India’s famers have relied upon the arrival of the monsoon but changes suggest a hotter and less predictable world.

As the world warms, monsoon changes are set to cause havoc across a huge and densely populated swathe of the planet. The great South Asian summer monsoon will become both stronger and less reliable.

2019 effects of monsoon in Dhaka

German scientists predict a pattern of extremely wet years in the future, but the arrival of these will be chaotic. Even a late monsoon can be devastating for those whose lives and livelihoods depend on the rainy season. A failure can be catastrophic.

nd yet too much rain can also have calamitous consequences: it can flood ripening grain fields, wash away topsoils and even − by reducing the storage of carbon in the soil − help accelerate further warming of the planet.

Around one billion people depend on the monsoon for their well-being, for trade and manufacture, and for food systems and agriculture. And the years ahead could become more chaotic, as a consequence of global heating driven by profligate use of fossil fuels and the destruction of natural ecosystems worldwide.

“For every degree Celsius of warming, monsoon rainfalls will likely increase by about 5%,” said Anja Katzenberger of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

“We were also able to confirm previous studies, but find that global warming is increasing monsoon rainfall in India even more than previously thought. It is dominating monsoon dynamics in the 21st century.”

She and colleagues report in the journal Earth System Dynamics that they analysed 32 advanced climate simulations to look for a pattern of change in the region’s weather.

About four-fifths of all the region’s rainfall happens in the summer: crop yields − especially rice − are highly sensitive to the monsoon’s coming. Agriculture makes up at least one-fifth of the Indian gross domestic product or GDP, so rainfall is vital to the economic and social well-being of hundreds of millions of people.

During the second half of the 20th century, the trend seemed to be towards a gradual drying of the rains. In the first decades of this century, the pattern seems reversed: monsoons are getting stronger. Quite how tiny annual rises in global average temperatures affect the winds that bring the summer rains has still to be ascertained, but ocean warming driven by human changes to greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere is almost certainly involved.

Rice at risk

And this is not good news for the farmers who, for generations, have placed their bets on the regular arrival of the rains. There is even evidence that in the deep past, a succession of monsoon failures may have toppled an early civilisation.

“Crops need water especially in the initial growing period, but too much rainfall during other growing states can harm plants − including rice, on which the majority of India’s population is depending for sustenance,” said Julia Pongratz from the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, another of the authors.

“This makes the Indian economy and food system highly sensitive to volatile monsoon patterns.”

And Anders Levermann, also from the Potsdam Institute, said: “We see more and more that climate change is about unpredictable weather extremes and their serious consequences, because what is really on the line is the socio-economic well-being of the Indian subcontinent.

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Scientists’ Rebellion

Scientists across the world have been raising awareness, writing open letters, taking action and calling for action on climate change for several years’ now. Not least has been “Scientists for Global Responsibility”, of which I am a member. https//www.sgr.org.uk

But now, a new grouping has emerged from XR (Extinction Rebellion), which is calling for more radical action. A Global Scientist Rebellion was called for 25th-28th March 2021. Scientists from around he world were urged to disobey the system, to demonstrate the scale and urgency of the climate crisis.

Here is a statement from their website scientistrebellion.com

The climate and ecological crises threaten every aspect of human civilisation. Despite decades of warnings from scientists and others, greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures continue to soar. A domino effect of climate tipping points threatens to push the Earth into a state that is alien and inhospitable to human civilisation.

Still, mega-corporations ransack the natural world with support from their servants in public office. Governments who stray from protecting corporate interest in favour of human need are attacked and delegitimised in the billionaire press, face the prospect of international capital flight, and of political or military coups. This corruption of democracy sits at the heart of climate inaction. 

Billions are threatened with starvation, displacement, drought and inundation within the next few decades. Scientists know business as usual cannot continue: it’s time to put our bodies where our mouths are and resist, for truth and life.

The Climate and Ecological Crisis

Human industrial activity has impacted the world as severely as the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs. 70% of the mammals, fish, birds, plants, amphibians, reptiles, and around half of the insects annihilated. Greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures soaring faster than at perhaps any point in Earth’s history. Climate tipping points being crossed – like the melting of the Arctic – accelerating heating and stripping humanity of meaningful control over our future. 

We are heading toward a world at least 4°C hotter this century. The effects will be catastrophic. Even 2°C – which we are set to burn through by 2050 – means billions without enough food and water, hundreds of millions of refugees, historic natural disasters virtually every year, war, disease. Without political and economic revolution we face a nightmare from which we cannot wake. Scientists know this, and we are starting to resist.   

Quotation:
“There is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow but we will destroy almost everything we have built up over the last 2000 years” –
Prof. Hans Schellnhuber, director emeritus of the Potsdam Institute.


Why We Rebel

Scientists have spent decades writing papers, advising government, briefing the press: all have failed. What is the point in documenting in ever greater detail the catastrophe we face, if we are not willing to do anything about it? 


Academics are perfectly placed to wage a rebellion: we exist in rich hubs of knowledge and expertise; we are well connected across the world, and to decision-makers; we have large platforms from which to inform, educate and rally others all over the world; and we have implicit authority and legitimacy, which is the basis of political power. We can make a difference. We must do what we can to halt the greatest destruction in human history.

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Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

This initiative was originally started by British scientists who are part of Scientists for Global Responsibility. There is a open latter, which can be signed at:

http://www.fossilfueltreaty.org/open-letter

Here is the wording of the letter:

We, the undersigned, call on governments around the world to adopt and implement a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as a matter of urgency, to protect the lives and livelihoods of present and future generations through a global, equitable phase out of fossil fuels in line with the scientific consensus to not exceed 1.5ºC of warming. 

The fossil fuel system and its impacts are global and require a global solution. We call on governments to urgently commence negotiations to develop, adopt and implement a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty laying out a binding global plan to:

• End new expansion of fossil fuel production in line with the best available science as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Environment Programme
• Phase out existing production of fossil fuels in a manner that is fair and equitable, taking into account the respective dependency of countries on fossil fuels, and their capacity to transition;
• Invest in a transformational plan to ensure 100% access to renewable energy globally, support fossil fuel-dependent economies to diversify away from fossil fuels, and enable people and communities across the globe to flourish through a global just transition.

The scientific consensus is clear that human activities are primarily responsible for global climate change, and that the climate crisis now represents the greatest threat to human civilization and nature. [1] 

The burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – is the greatest contributor to climate change, responsible for almost 80% of carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution. [2] 

To keep warming to below the temperature goal of 1.5ºC, as reflected in the scientific literature and the  IPCC’s special report on 1.5ºC, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be at least 45% lower globally by 2030. [3]

According to the most recent Production Gap Report, this requires an average decline in fossil fuel production of at least 6% per year between 2020-2030. However, the fossil fuel industry is planning to increase production by 2% per year. [4] It is vital that the global transition towards a zero carbon world is equitable, based on countries’ fair share of expected climate action, their historical contribution to climate change and their capacity to act. This means richer countries must reduce production of fossil fuels at a faster rate than poorer countries that require greater support to transition, including through the redirection of finance and subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable energy. 

In addition to climate impacts, new research shows that the air pollution caused by fossil fuels was responsible for almost 1 in 5 deaths worldwide in 2018. [5] These significant health and environmental impacts are derived from the extracting, refining, transporting and burning of fossil fuels and are often borne by vulnerable and marginalised communities. At the same time, centralised, fossil fuel-generated energy often concentrates power and wealth into the hands of a select few, bypassing the communities in which extraction occurs. [6]

The current dominant approach to tackling climate change focuses on policies that restrict greenhouse gas emissions and the demand for fossil fuels, for example by fostering the growth of substitutes for fossil fuels such as renewable energy and electric vehicles. [7] But there has been limited focus on policies aimed at constraining the production and supply of fossil fuels at the source. 

Yet efforts to reduce demand for fossil fuels will be undermined if supply continues to grow. Continued production means either that fossil fuels will continue to be burnt for energy – pushing the world towards catastrophic global warming – or that the industry and countries reliant on fossil fuels will face massive stranded assets, stranded workers, and stranded economies, as government revenue streams currently relied on for development and public sector employment and essential public services evaporate.

While the Paris Agreement lays an important foundation for action on the demand-side of the equation, without international cooperation and policy processes focusing on the supply of fossil fuels, countries will continue to overshoot their already insufficient emissions targets. [8]

Given the significant historical contribution of fossil fuels to climate change, and the industry’s continuing expansion plans, we are calling for a solution commensurate with the scale of the problem. Phasing down coal, oil and gas in line with 1.5ºC requires global cooperation, in a way that is fair, equitable and reflects countries’ levels of dependence on fossil fuels, and capacities to transition. This, in turn, should be underpinned by financial resources, including technology transfer, to enable a just transition for workers and communities in developing countries and a decent life for all.

In this context, we add our voices to the call from civil society, youth leaders, Indigenous Peoples, faith institutions, cities and sub-national governments for a global treaty to address fossil fuels. [9] 

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