More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries have signed a declaration that doesn't beat around the bush: They declare "clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency." In the declaration from the Alliance of World Scientists, published in the journal BioScience, the scientists warn that an "immense increase of scale in endeavors to conserve our biosphere is needed to avoid untold suffering due to the climate crisis." The scientists set out "critical and interrelated" steps that should be taken in six areas: Energy, short-lived pollutants, nature, the economy, food, and, most controversially, population, NBC reports. They call for the stabilization of the world population through measures including making family-planning services available to all and working toward full gender equity in education.
Declaration co-author William Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University, said they aimed to have the declaration endorsed by "a wide diversity of scientists in many different disciplines, because climate change has moved beyond a topic just for climate scientists." One of the signatories was conservation biologist Sheila Colla, who studies bumblebees and other pollinators. Part of her work is "seeing how much is interconnected in terms of the land, our food, the wildlife that pollinates, that provides ecosystem services, and the climate," she tells the CBC. "Climate change isn't something that any ecologist can ignore." (The US has started the process of withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.)
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