Our world, planet earth, is our home.
Here’s how United Nation Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the state of our home, the planet, in his landmark speech at Columbia University in New York according to United Nations Climate Change News, December 2, 2020.
We are facing:
- A devastating pandemic,
- New heights of global heating,
- New lows of ecological degradation and
- New setbacks in our work towards global goals for more equitable, inclusive and sustainable development.
[Ecological: the pattern of relationships of one or more organisms and the environment, The Merriam -Webster Dictionary]
To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken. Humanity is waging war on nature. Nature always strikes back — and it is already doing so with growing force and fury.
Biodiversity is collapsing. One million species are at risk of extinction. [Biodiversity: biological diversity in an environment as indicated by numbers of different species of plants and animals.]
Ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes. [Ecosystem: the complex of an ecological community and its environment functioning as a unit in nature.]
Deserts are spreading. [Desert: dry land with few plants and little rainfall.] Wetlands are being lost. [Wetlands: land or areas (as swamps) containing much soil moisture.]
Every year, we lose 10 million hectares of forests. [1 hectare: 10,000 meters or 2.47 acres]
[According to JourneyNorth.org, 1 hectare equals about two-and-a-half football fields.]
[10 million hectares =
- 24.7 million acres,
- 100,000 million meters,
- 100 billion meters, or
- 0.1 trillion meters]
Oceans are overfished — and choking with plastic waste. The carbon dioxide they absorb is acidifying the seas. Coral reefs are bleached and dying.
Air and water pollution are killing 9 million people annually – more than six times the current toll of the pandemic.
And with people and livestock encroaching further into animal habitats and disrupting wild spaces, we could see more viruses and other disease-causing agents jump from animals to humans.
Let’s not forget that 75 percent of new and emerging human infectious diseases are zoonotic.
Today, two new authoritative reports from the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme spell out how close we are to climate catastrophe.
2020 is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record globally – even with the cooling effect of this year’s La Nina.
The past decade was the hottest in human history. Ocean heat is at record levels. This year, more than 80 per cent of the world’s oceans experienced a marine heatwave.
In the Arctic, 2020 has seen exceptional warmth, with temperatures more than 3 degrees Celsius above average – and more than 5 degrees in northern Siberia. Arctic sea ice in October was the lowest on record – and now re-freezing has been the slowest on record. Greenland ice has continued its long-term decline, losing an average of 278 gigatons a year. Permafrost is melting and releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are increasingly the new normal. The North Atlantic hurricane season has seen 30 storms, more than double the long-term average and breaking the record for a full season. Central America is still reeling from two back-to-back hurricanes, part of the most intense period for such storms in recent years. Last year such disasters cost the world $150 billion.
COVID-19 lockdowns have temporarily reduced emissions and pollution. But carbon dioxide levels are still at record highs – and rising. In 2019, carbon dioxide levels reached 148 percent of pre-industrial levels. In 2020, the upward trend has continued despite the pandemic. Methane soared even higher – to 260 per cent. Nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas that also harms the ozone layer, has escalated by 123 percent.
Meanwhile, climate policies have yet to rise to the challenge. Emissions are 62 percent higher now than when international climate negotiations began in 1990. Every tenth of a degree of warming matters.
Today, we are at 1.2 degrees of warming and already witnessing unprecedented climate extremes and volatility in every region and on every continent. We are headed for a thundering temperature rise of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius this century.
The science is crystal clear: to limit temperature rise to 1.5-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to decrease fossil fuel production by roughly 6 percent every year between now and 2030. Instead, the world is going in the opposite direction — planning an annual increase of 2 percent.
The fallout of the assault on our planet is impeding our efforts to eliminate poverty and imperiling food security. And it is making our work for peace even more difficult, as the disruptions drive instability, displacement and conflict.
It is no coincidence that seventy percent of the most climate vulnerable countries are also among the most politically and economically fragile.
It is not happenstance that of the 15 countries most susceptible to climate risks, eight host a United Nations peacekeeping or special political mission.
As always, the impacts fall most heavily on the world’s most vulnerable people. Those who have done the least to cause the problem suffer the most. Even in the developed world, the marginalized are the first victims of disasters and the last to recover.
United Nations Climate Change News, 2 December 2020 – UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ landmark speech, Columbia University, New York
How can we positively affect climate change and help heal Earth? How can we reduce our carbon footprint? Simple Eco Actions are simple ways we can do so. If you want to get started with three basic ones, select the Basic 3-Step at the top of this page.