“We must first trust in science...because now is the “time for science and solidarity.”

Why Climate Matters
In a leading edge article, Why Climate Matters from 2020, scientist and explorer Paul Andrew Mayewski, international lawyer Charles H. Norchi, and Harvard University environmental health expert Alexander More discuss 10 reasons why climate change is a global crisis that requires immediate action.

1.    Climate change is the primary threat to global security

2.    We are experiencing a “new climate reality” and humans are the major cause

3.    Climate change and its consequences require local knowledge

4.    Climate can change suddenly

5.    Climate change causes severe health consequences

6.    Climate change adaptation & mitigation are creating enduring jobs, workforce development, and wealth

7.    Clean air laws improve human and ecosystem health, but require strict enforcement

8.    Water is the new oil – the most precious resource on the plant

9.    Renewable energy and lower demand are essential, but they require government support

10.  Geoengineering solutions will not replace mitigation, adaptation and conservation

COVID-19 and Climate Change
The authors also wrote about COVID-19 and Climate Change: The Planets Twin Crises. They explain that humanity is now confronting twin planetary crises: COVID-19 and climate change.

The first was sudden – but not unexpected; the second has been in the making for generations. As a two-front war, they are both scientific realities and threaten human existence. Together, they require global response. No country can deal with these two crises on its own.

The article goes on to discuss what COVID-!9 and the climate crisis have in common and why the twin problems require global collaboration and diplomacy amongst countries, international organizations, research institutions, scientists and policy professionals.

The article concludes:

The world’s poorest are also the most vulnerable. In 2015 the UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. These represent 17 objectives to improve human life and the planet with a target date of 2030. Goal 3 is Health and Well-Being. Goal 13 is Climate Action.

Will COVID-19 derail each? On Earth Day 22 April, 2020, WMO’s Taalas insisted: “We need to show the same determination and unity against climate change as against COVID-19.”

In recent years, leading figures in countries ranging from the United States to Brazil have found it expedient to retreat from objective scientific facts. The good news is that as a consequence of the current pandemic this brief yet hazardous anti-science moment may be over.

Citizens worldwide are now accepting that scientific facts must be the basis of decision-making for law and policy. This is the only way to prevail.

On 14 April 2020 UN Secretary General António Guterres established the United Nations Communications Response Initiative to flood the Internet with facts and science in an effort to counter “the growing scourge of misinformation”. We must first trust in science, he added, because now is the “time for science and solidarity”.