We must join forces to save the planet, prominent figures urge

We are a curse on life on Earth, even if often unwittingly so. We’re depriving wild animals of their habitats. We’re wreaking havoc with ecosystems. We’re even changing Earth’s very climate. Unless we mend our ways, and fast, we’ll soon be living on a bleak planet bereft of its once wondrous biodiversity.

So warn 100 prominent academics, politicians, authors and environmental campaigners from across the planet who have signed an open letter that calls on decisionmakers in powerful nations to start taking meaningful action to try and heal the planet, and life on it, before it’s too late.

“In our complex, interdependent global ecosystem, life is dying, with species extinction accelerating. The climate crisis is worsening much faster than previously predicted. Every single day 200 species are becoming extinct. This desperate situation can’t continue,” write the signatories, who include American linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky, British philosopher AC Grayling, Canadian author Naomi Klein and English novelist Philip Pullman.

“International political organisations and national governments must foreground the climate-emergency issue immediately, urgently drawing up comprehensive policies to address it,” the signatories stress.

Importantly, they add, rich nations should underwrite projects and polices in developing nations aimed at protecting local environments. “Conventionally privileged nations must voluntarily fund comprehensive environment-protection policies in impoverished nations, to compensate the latter for foregoing unsustainable economic growth, and paying recompense for the planet-plundering imperialism of materially privileged nations,” they write.

Yet it isn’t just governments that should dedicate themselves far more diligently to environmental causes. So should average citizens too. “We must collectively do whatever’s necessary non-violently, to persuade politicians and business leaders to relinquish their complacency and denial,” they insist.

“Their ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option. Global citizens will no longer put up with this failure of our planetary duty,” the signatories explain. “Every one of us, especially in the materially privileged world, must commit to accepting the need to live more lightly, consume far less, and to not only uphold human rights but also our stewardship responsibilities to the planet.”