UK's Leading Scientists Urge Immediate Climate Action

The pre-eminent institutions in British science and engineering – some with long records of promoting fossil fuels – say the UK should lead the way to a zero carbon world.

Twenty-four of Britain’s most learned scientific societies have joined forces to urge the British government to act now to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

They want the UK to take the lead in intergovernmental talks in Paris in December, and keep global warming to an average of 2°C this century.

The societies want drastic reductions in the burning of fossil fuels, a shift towards energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy, and other changes to sidestep damaging climate change as a consequence of the atmospheric build-up of carbon dioxide.

A joint communiqué agreed by organisations that speak for the most advanced research in the humanities, the social sciences, the arts, science, medicine and engineering urges action by governments, individuals, business, local communities and public institutions, to make the transition to a zero carbon world.

That any of the institutions has signed the communiqué is no surprise:  many of them have delivered such advice separately, and some of them many times.  What is significant about this latest statement is that all sorts of scholarly authorities with quite different origins have been united in one unequivocal statement.

Read more at UK's Leading Scientists Urge Immediate Climate Action