A brand new report published yesterday by Oxford’s BioScience and backed by 11,000 scientists in 153 countries, warns humanity of imminent climate crisis and imploring people to urgently reduce meat intake and adopt a plant-based diet. It warns that the “crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected” and that the situation “is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.”
In the highly alarming and impactful report the international team of scientists agree that “the climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than most scientists expected,” and warns that disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, will potentially “make large areas of Earth uninhabitable.”
The report urges that for humanity to secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live in terms of six specific areas: Energy, Short-lived pollutants, Nature, Food, Economy, and Population. In terms of the Food category, the scientists state that eating “mostly plant-based foods while reducing the global consumption of animal products, especially ruminant livestock, can improve human health and significantly lower GHG emissions,” describing how the uptaking of this simple lifestyle change would also free cropland and help with natural climate solutions.
“We need to drastically reduce the enormous amount of food waste around the world.”
Other key points from the report:
- The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle.
- Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domestic product, global tree cover loss, fossil fuel consumption, the number of air passengers carried, and CO2 emissions.
- We must protect and restore Earth’s ecosystems. Phytoplankton, coral reefs, forests, savannas, grasslands, wetlands, peatlands, soils, mangroves, and sea grasses contribute greatly to sequestration of atmospheric CO2.
- Marine and terrestrial plants, animals, and microorganisms play significant roles in carbon and nutrient cycling and storage.
- Consumption of solar and wind energy has increased 373 percent per decade, but in 2018, it was still 28 times smaller than fossil fuel consumption.
- Especially disturbing are concurrent trends in the vital signs of climatic impacts. Three abundant atmospheric GHGs (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide) continue to increase, as does global surface temperature.
- Globally, ice has been rapidly disappearing, evidenced by declining trends in minimum summer Arctic sea ice, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and glacier thickness worldwide.
Read on:
- How to Consume Less: 7 Steps to Greater Independence
- Take Action: 15 Everyday Ways to Combat Climate Change
- 12 Pictures that Will Make You Immediately Alter Your Consumption Habits
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