We owe a lot to the heroic activism of the tumultuous 60s that produced the first Earth Day in 1970. At the time, pesticides were in our food supply, the air was choked with smog, our drinking water tainted by pollutants, and our national symbol, the Bald Eagle, was nearing extinction. President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to watch over America’s clean air and water. While all this bipartisan support yielded much optimism, we have a long way to go to a truly safe climate and vibrant world.
During the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio, 1,000 scientists sent a letter to UN delegates warning of an extinction crisis underway. Decades later, over 1 million species are now facing a doomed fate, at the same time the planet’s overheating has sped up, mainly from burning fossil fuels and forest destruction. The world reached unprecedented greenhouse gas emissions last year, prompting UN Secretary-General António Guterres to call it a “code red” emergency. Responding to these alarming trends, 25,000 scientists issued a warning to humanity of time running out to avoid imminent global catastrophes.
Consider these warning signals from Earth. An ice sheet the size of Nevada in western Antarctica is melting much faster than anticipated, which will eventually inundate California’s coastline. Both poles recorded extreme temperatures in March. Native villages in Alaska are vacating ancestral grounds due to permafrost melting. Large wildfires, driven by extreme temperatures, drought and tornado-force winds, have forced thousands to evacuate. New Orleans has been hit by multiple major hurricanes in just 15 years.
Our very health is intimately connected to that of the planet. Diseases like West Nile, Lyme, Ebola, SARS, Zika and possibly even COVID-19 have been linked to wildlife forced to vacate natural habitats where they then come into contact with densely populated areas.
The climate emergency is upon us and it’s intertwined with the unraveling of the natural world that otherwise may hold the keys to our very survival.
We must do at least these three things right away:
1) End our addiction to fossil fuels and the corporations and unjust governments (think Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela) that profit at our expense while we transition to clean, renewable energy
2) Protect intact ecosystems from forests to wetlands as natural climate solutions
3) Adapt to extreme climate-driven events by preparing for them now
During the November 2021 UN climate summit COP26 in Glasgow, 140 world leaders, including President Joe Biden, pledged to end global forest destruction by 2030. The world already has lost one-third of its primary (unlogged) forests. Global forest destruction is second only to burning of fossil fuels in heating up the planet. When trees are chopped down, most of their stored carbon is emitted to the atmosphere. In the United States, carbon emissions from logging are up to 10-times those of wildfires and insect outbreaks combined.
Biden can lead by example in directing federal land management agencies to protect our nation’s forest carbon champions — large trees and mature forests. And while nearly all old-growth forests in the continental United States were logged decades ago, many on federal lands are reaching maturity again. The largest trees in older forests absorb and store massive amounts of carbon dioxide pollution while purifying drinking water. Protecting these forests from coast to coast would be the president’s signature forest-climate policy. Fortunately, the Tongass rainforest in Alaska is transitioning out of old-growth logging and into previously logged but reforested areas that can supply timber needs. The same needs to happen nationally.
We must also prepare for the worse of climate disruptions given it will take decades to slow down an overheating planet. That means using wetlands and streamside forests as natural buffers against storm surges, and retrofitting buildings for stronger tornadoes and wildfires.
In the spirit of Earth Day, we all need to think globally by acting locally to solve the extinction and climate crises that will increasingly affect everyone on the planet, especially future generations. The path forward is clear — protect natural climate solutions and get off fossil fuels.
Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph. D., is chief scientist at Wild Heritage and an award-winning scientist with 300 peer reviewed publications and books, including “Conservation Science & Advocacy for a Planet in Peril: Speaking Truth to Power.”
William Ripple, Ph. D., is a distinguished professor of Ecology at Oregon State University.
Franz Baumann is a former United Nations assistant secretary-general and visiting research professor at New York University.