Last week I concluded my review of the year by writing “I hope 2025 is the year people worldwide wake up to the multiple threats we are facing and start to act accordingly.” Maybe my wish for the year is beginning to be fulfilled.
This week the media has been full of the horrendous wildfires in Los Angeles. I don’t want to downplay how horrendous these events are and any loss of life is dreadful. But 24 lives lost pales into insignificance when compared with the lives lost in the droughts, storms, and floods that have regularly affected the Global South. What makes this event different is it is happening in one of the world’s richest countries.
But the scale of the fires is truly frightening. 180,000 people were under evacuation orders at the peak of the fires. That’s about a third of the whole population of Sheffield. Already 10,000 buildings have been burnt to the ground leaving many homeless and the fires are still not under control.
Wildfires are not new to LA, but as global heating has continued they have got very much worse. California’s 5 worst wildfires ever have all been in the last 6 years. It is exactly what climate scientists have been warning us about. As Vice President Kamala Harris lives not far from the fires, perhaps she will now take the threat of climate change more seriously. However, there is little hope that incoming President Trump will change his mind. His response to the disaster was to blame Governor Gavin Newsom for the fires, rather than the oil and gas industry that has caused global heating. It is so disappointing that Trump has successfully deflected the media’s attention from reporting this as a climate disaster to concentrating on scoring party political points.
Climate deniers often say we can’t afford Net Zero, it’s too expensive. But look at the costs of these fires. Early estimates are saying $150 billion but the fires are still growing. I wonder if the insurance companies will have the money to be able to pay out. They certainly won’t be able to keep paying as the climate becomes more extreme, so insurance will become more and more expensive and will be unavailable to those in high-risk areas.
Peter Kalmus is a climate scientist who fled from LA two years ago because he was worried about the fire risk.
In the video he says “It’s not a new normal. Its a staircase to a hotter more hellish Earth…I don’t know what it is going to take for us to stop all these stupid wars and come together to deal with the Emergency that is making our planet less and less habitable.”
But one thing all countries need to learn from this disaster is Governments, Councils and households all have to be much better prepared for climate disasters, be they wildfires, floods, droughts or storms as they will all be happening more frequently and with more ferocity.
Also this week we have had the news from Copernicus that 2024 was officially the hottest year since records began and the first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level. Human-induced climate change from our fossil fuel emissions remains the primary driver of extreme air and sea surface temperatures.
The world’s governments agreed in 2015 that they’d work to limit warming to 1.5C. That limit was chosen based on the warnings of scientists, who agree that crossing that threshold will cause climate impacts that would escalate very quickly – potentially irreversibly – putting us all in an extremely high level of danger.
A decade later – let alone at the end of the century – we are already there.
The 1.5C level is so important because breaching this means tipping points that would permanently make our climate far more extreme become much more likely.
Derbyshire-based climate scientist Bill McGuire this week challenged scientists to get involved. He wrote on BlueSky “It is no longer acceptable to sit on the fence. Everyone of the world’s 9 million scientists MUST speak up NOW about the dire straits we are in and demand #climate action now”. He co-wrote an article with Roger Hallam from Just Stop Oil, who is currently serving 5 years in prison for his attempts to alert the public and the Government of the dire threat from global heating.
In their Guardian article, they wrote “As a campaigner and a climate scientist, we have come together to say this to you: we are heartbroken, we are devastated, but most of all we are absolutely furious that our political class and our judiciary are betraying our country, and the lives and livelihoods of our children and many generations still to come. The establishment and vested interests around the world have closed ranks to shut down voices seeking to tell the truth about our dire predicament.
But we are not done yet. We need to make 2025 the year that scientists, activists and all who care about the future of our planet mobilise together, to demand that our leaders, and governments around the world, treat climate breakdown as the desperate emergency it is, and act accordingly to slash emissions as the science demands – by at least 45% (compared with 2010) by 2030.
There are no grant-awarding committees on a dead planet, so it is time to choose which side of history you are on.”
York based scientist and activist for Scientists for Extinction Rebellion, Dr Abi Perrin said “There’s so much scientists can contribute: to spreading knowledge and understanding; to influencing and pressuring powerful people we may have access to; to designing and creating better, regenerative systems for an age that needs them more than ever; to supporting, standing in solidarity with, or better still becoming those who act vocally, visibly and with courage on decades of scientists’ warnings.
Right now the community of scientists engaged in any or all of these actions is small, but together we support one another to achieve much more than we could as individuals. To any scientist reading, you are needed as we face the fires, floods and fear of this planetary emergency… but It’s time to pivot: from calmly documenting our world to acting urgently to protect it.” Find out more about Scientists for Extinction Rebellion here and sign up here.
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