An Urgent Call for Action

From a statement inspired by the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit and published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

We need to reinvent our relationship with planet Earth. The future of all life on this planet, humans and our societies included, requires us to become effective stewards of the global commons — the climate, ice, land, ocean, freshwater, forests, soils, and rich diversity of life that regulate the state of the planet, and combine to create a unique and harmonious life-support system. There is now an existential need to build economies and societies that support Earth system harmony rather than disrupt it.

Update (July 1):  A draft of next year's IPCC report was leaked to Agence France-Presse. Fiona Harvey describes a key point.

The draft warns of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible. It warns: "Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot."

Al Jazeera adds:

Species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas – these and other devastating climate effects are accelerating and are bound to become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 30.