Global crises that fuel and accelerate the impact on the planetary systems which support life on Earth are being driven by humanity. There are 12 interconnected crises that are pushing us closer to critical climate tipping points. Once we pass the tipping points, climate change will become self-reinforcing, irreversible and out of our control. When any one of the following global crises worsens, it can make some or even all of the others worse:
- Resolving the current COVID-19 pandemic beyond just the wealthiest nations: It could take another three to five years for everyone to be vaccinated and global ‘herd immunity’ to occur.
- Increasing global economic instabilities – more recessions with slower recoveries: Even before the COVID pandemic, many of the world’s major economies were experiencing larger recession cycles. COVID-19 may result in one of the weakest and most unstable recoveries in recorded history for many economies.
- Ever-rising over-population: The Earth has the carrying capacity for two billion people maximum. We are currently racing to 9.8 billion by 2050.
- Over-consumption causing ever-rising global resource depletion: The richest 10% produce 50% of consumption-based global emissions. The poorest 50% produce only 10% yet suffer the worst impacts – higher temperatures; drought / flooding significantly increasing food shortages and prices, leading to more starvation and mass migrations. Overconsumption is depleting fish stocks; loss of topsoil; and toxic pollution of water, land and air.
- Escalating pollution of land, air, and waters: This will create and accelerate global health, social, and economic problems. Ocean heating and ocean acidification from carbon through global warming will eventually kill off much of the oceans’ oxygen-producing plankton. Plankton is responsible for 50% to 70% of all oxygen produced on the planet.
- Loss of biodiversity: More plants and animals are becoming extinct than at any other time in human history. Human activity – overpopulation, global warming, overuse, pollution, etc – is causing loss of natural habitat.
- Growing economic inequality, social and racial injustice, hunger, and poverty: Today less than 1% of the world’s population owns more than 50% of all wealth. Economic inequality, poverty, food shortages and prices are all rising, leading once again to mass starvation and mass migrations. In 2020, 130 million people lacked adequate food.
- Escalating local, regional, and international criminality, conflicts, terrorism, and war: The threats of population-destabilization, security, and stability are expected to increase in their intensity, frequency, and scale.
- Mass migrations: Political and economic instability, increasing terrorism, conflicts, and war, plus global warming, will result in massive migrations of millions of desperate refugees and climate escapees.
- More frequent pandemics like COVID-19 and other disease epidemics: This will be due in part to global warming melting of the permafrost, loss of natural animal habitat, overcrowding, less resilient health systems, mass migrations, wars and conflicts.
- Increasing political instability and collapsing governments: In 2020 we saw numerous countries on the verge of economic or political collapse.
- The ever-accelerating global warming emergency: The global warming emergency is human-driven, causing escalating desertification, sea-level rise, flooding, deforestation, reef collapse, droughts, wildfires, extreme storms, and the spread of diseases through epidemics and pandemics.
- These crises need worldwide solutions and the co-operation of all world leaders. We need to ask our leaders what plans they have to tackle these crises. Remember, if the bees and plankton die, so do we. For more information about Sherwood Forest Friends of the Earth, we’re on Facebook at: Sherwood Forest FoE, or email sffofe@btinternet.com.
Pauline Meechan
Sherwood Forest Friends of the Earth