Global Climate Emergency: Preventing fatal “future facts” from becoming reality

Photo by Friends of the Earth Europe

Just after millions of people had protested across the world demanding urgent action on the ecological emergency of climate change on 20 and 27 September (The Guardian, 27 September 2019), the IPCC released yet another devastating report. According to this report on oceans and the cryosphere (the frozen parts of the planet), the average global sea level rose by 15 cm during the 20^th century. Nevertheless, if carbon emissions do not reduce sufficiently to achieve the COP21 Paris goal of 1.5⁰C then sea level rises could exceed 1 metre by the end of the century, and 5.4 metres by 2300 under “high emissions scenarios”. Not only would this threaten coastal populations (and many of our megacities are coastal), the change to oxygen levels and acidity of the oceans would have dire consequences for ecosystems. In this guest post, Barry Gills and Jamie Morgan reflect on the climate crisis drawing on their recently published Globalizations “Global Climate Emergency” special editorial essay.