More than 1000 academics sign historic declaration ahead of Egypt Climate Summit COP27

High-level academics accept that there is no plausible pathway to 1.5°C. This requires global emissions to peak before 2025 and be reduced by 43% by 2030. Even that would lead to exceeding 1.5°C in the next ten years.

More than a thousand academics from 52 countries have signed an open letter from Scientist Rebellion stating that “it is no longer defensible to say publicly that the 1.5°C global warming limit is still valid.” The list includes 121 Spanish doctors and professors from disciplines such as physical sciences, economics, mathematics, social and natural sciences and psychology. At the international level, the adhesion of the main authors of the IPCC stands out.

The letter’s signatory, Professor Marta Guadalupe Rivera Ferre, an expert in food systems and lead author of the IPCC, said: “This is a historic statement from academia. It underlines the urgent need for experts to clearly tell the general public, politicians and the environmental movement that there is no viable option to stay below 1.5°C.”

For her part, Dr. Dr Stella Nyambura Mbau, a postdoc in sustainable development from Kenya, said: “It is critical that academics across the global north raise their voices about the failure to stay below 1.5C of warming. Academics from the global south need our colleagues from Europe and North America to speak up, as they are conditioned by political and economic power resisting climate action. This would never have been more urgent, now that a 1.5°C world is approaching.”

“There is no plausible way to get to 1.5°C”

According to the letter, “high-level academics accept that there is no plausible way to reach 1.5°C. This requires global emissions to peak before 2025 and be reduced by 43% by 2030. Even that would lead to exceeding 1.5°C in the next ten years. The most optimistic scenario presented by the IPCC is based on the hypothetical deployment of large-scale carbon technologies to reduce temperatures by the end of the century.”

Professor Bill McGuire, Emeritus Professor of Geophysical and Climate Risks at the University of London, said: “Giving the public the impression that we can stay on the 1.5°C barrier is dangerous, misleading and simply false. Not only does it suggest that we can still dodge widespread climate breakdown, but it provides an excuse for politicians to keep prevaricating and for polluters to keep polluting.”

The letter stresses the need to set the challenge of restricting temperature rise “well below 2°C”, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, using the most conservative assumptions about the potential of negative emissions technologies. “That is, to reflect the scientific uncertainty on the subject, and to show the public the importance of reducing carbon emissions, in line with scientific findings.”

Finally, the international scientific community calls for “that the three pillars of climate policy – mitigation, adaptation and compensation – be effective. This means that rich nations commit to delivering $100 billion a year to help poorer countries mitigate climate change, as a minimum starting point.

Source: Diario 16