Alliances for Climate Action’s Global Call to Action
We are in the midst of a deep global transformation. Human society as we know it – the way in which we power our homes and industries, move around, and produce our food – needs to shift if we are to give every person around the world the chance of a dignified life while avoiding a collapse of the biophysical systems that sustain us.
The latest scientific reports confirm that we are at a pivotal moment for humanity. The climate crisis is upon us, as is a deepening crisis for nature, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The harbingers of what will happen if we don’t act – growing fires from western Canada and the United States to Australia, floods from China to Europe, droughts from South America to Africa – are all around us.
We can no longer stay on the sidelines. The time to act is now, and we have the tools to make it happen.
This coming decade, 2021-2030, is the decisive one if we are to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5°C relative to preindustrial levels and avoid the worst impacts of climate change:
- This is the decade when we must decouple human wellbeing from the burning of coal, oil, gas, forests and grasslands, shift our reliance to sustainable forms of renewable energy, clean transport, regenerative agriculture, and reinvest in the natural ecosystems that sustain life on earth.
- This is the decade when we must cut global greenhouse emissions in half, invest in our climate preparedness, and usher an irreversible transition to net-zero, resilient societies by 2050.
- This is also the decade when we must build a new social contract to bring this transition to fruition, with full recognition that everyone must take a part, and that no one may be left behind as we transition away from carbon-intensive industries and look to rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic.
