Common Sense for the 21st Century (excerpt)

By Roger Hallam, Resilience.org

What does a real Climate Emergency action plan look like? The answer is defined by the science − by the physics and chemistry. Some find it hard to imagine this is actually happening. Some think it seems ‘unrealistic’. But ask yourself about the alternative of risking the collapse of civilisation, the death of billions of people and the extinction of much of life on earth? Is that ‘realistic’? No economy on a dead planet.

Leading Climate Researchers: We Are in a Climate Emergency, Facing Existential Risks

By David Spratt, Climate Code Red

Last week a new paper in Nature caused a stir and world-wide headlines, and for good reason. “Climate tipping points - too risky to bet against” by Lenton, Rockstrom, Gaffney, Rahmstrof, Richardson, Steffen and Schellnhuber look at the “evidence on the threat of exceeding (climate system) tipping points, and whether we still have any control over them” because this “helps to define that we are in a climate emergency.”

Climate Emergency (1): “Something has Shifted”

By David Spratt, Climate Code Red

Welcome to this “rough guide” blog series on the climate emergency and climate emergency campaigning. This series looks at some of the questions frequently asked about the topic: what does the science say, what is an emergency, does the climate crisis fit the bill, what can councils do, how can we talk about it, what needs to be done, what about business, can the political system deal with an issue this big? And many more.

911, What’s Your Climate Emergency?

By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion

By declaring a national emergency concerning the southern border of the US, Trump may have unwittingly given the next Democratic president an additional weapon with which to combat climate change.

Philip Hammond won’t Tackle the Climate Crisis. But a Green New Deal would

By Molly Scott Cato, The Guardian blog

It simply makes no sense to allow something you can control – money – to be a limit on your ambition to deal with something that your future existence depends on, like the climate crisis.

The Climate Emergency Continuum: from Bad to Cataclysmic

By Jonathon Porritt, Jonathon Porritt blog

So it was with something of a sinking feeling that I decided to read both David Wallace-Well’s ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ and Bill McKibben’s new book, ‘Falter’, in the same fortnight. But I’m ever so pleased I did – not least because they’re both beautifully written, utterly compelling in their analysis, and, surprisingly, useful antidotes for premature despair!

‘So You’ve Declared a Climate Emergency, Now What?’ Event Review

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

What a climate emergency would mean for Exeter University, and what a genuinely low-carbon, resilient, localised, embedded, civic, ‘anchor institution’ would look like is a huge conversation, one that will need to cultivate an imaginative culture where anything feels possible, but on the strength of this event, that process has, hopefully, begun.

“Climate Emergency”: Evolution of a Global Campaign

By David Spratt, Climate Code Red

In a matter of months, the language of climate emergency has exploded into public space in a spectacular way, with national, regional and governments adopting the term.

SHOCK, HORROR: Poll Finds Strong Majority Support for Declaring a Climate Emergency

By David Spratt, Climate Code Red

In five countries —  Australia, the USA, Canada, the UK and Switzerland  — an impressive 382 local government authorities covering more than 33 million people have recognised or declared a climate emergency. And now polling conducted in Melbourne shows that a sizeable majority in that city support declaring a climate emergency.