Dal student at climate change conference

Bali Declaration

World’s top climate scientists call for urgent, tough greenhouse gas limits

Helmuth Thomas

More than 200 leading climate scientists are urging the United Nations Climate Conference of immediate action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, with a window of only 10 to 15 years for global emissions to peak and decline, and a goal of at least a 50 per cent reduction by 2050. 

The scientists, including Dalhousie professor Helmuth Thomas, Canada Research Chair in Marine Biogeochemistry, warn that if immediate action is not taken, many millions of people will be at risk from extreme events such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms, with coasts and cities threatened by rising sea levels, and many ecosystems, plants and animal species in serious danger of extinction.

The researchers have issued the “Bali Climate Declaration by Scientists” in which they call on government negotiators from the 180 nations represented at the meeting to recognize the urgency of taking action now.  They say the world may have as little as 10 years to start reversing the global rise in emissions.

“It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that we have to do something and do something now,” says Dr. Thomas, an oceanography professor at Dalhousie. “As scientists, we are saying no more stalling.”

The Bali Declaration endorses the latest scientific consensus that every effort must be made to keep increases in the globally averaged surface temperature to below 2 degrees C.  The scientists say that “to stay below 2 degrees C, global emissions must peak and decline in the next 10 to 15 years.”

The critical reductions in global emissions of greenhouse gases and the atmospheric stabilisation target highlighted in the Bali Declaration places a tremendous responsibility on the Bali United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Negotiations at Bali must start the process of reaching a new global agreement that sets strong and binding targets and includes the vast majority of the nations of the world, the scientists say.

The Bali Declaration concludes: “As scientists, we urge the negotiators to reach an agreement that takes these targets as a minimum requirement for a fair and effective global climate agreement.”