More than 11,000 scientists around the world have declared a climate emergency, warning of “untold suffering” without urgent action.
The declaration is based on analysis of more than 40 years of publicly available data covering a range of measures from energy use to deforestation and carbon emissions.
Scientists from the University of Sydney, Australia, Oregon State University and Tufts University in the US and the University of Cape Town in South Africa are joined in the warning by 11,000 signatories from 153 countries including the UK.
In a paper published in the journal Bioscience, the researchers set out indicators showing the impacts of humans on the climate. The paper describes “profoundly troubling” signs from activities including sustained increases in human populations, the amount of meat consumed per person, the number of air passengers carried and global tree cover loss, as well as carbon emissions and fossil fuel consumption.
The scientists warn that despite 40 years of global climate negotiations, people have largely failed to address the problem of global warming. Now “the climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected”, they say.
Read more: Telegraph