Twenty months after declaring a climate emergency and establishing a set of vital signs for the Earth, a coalition headed by two Oregon State University researchers says the updated vital signs “largely reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual.”
Authors led by OSU’s William Ripple and Christopher Wolf, in a paper published today in BioScience, are calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels in response to the climate crisis. They also want strategic climate reserves for the storage of carbon and the protection of biodiversity, and a global price for carbon high enough to induce “decarbonization” across the industrial and consumption spectrum.
The scientists note an unprecedented surge in climate-related disasters since 2019, including devastating floods, record-shattering heat waves and extraordinary storms and wildfires.
Read more at: Oregon State University
Slater fire (Photo Credit: Will Harling)