Vão-se acumulando
os avisos à humanidade de que estamos em emergência climática – mas nunca
parecem ser de mais. Esta quarta-feira, uma equipa de cientistas volta à carga
para reafirmar: os sinais de vida da Terra têm vindo a piorar nos últimos meses
e é urgente combater as alterações climáticas. Num artigo publicado na revista
BioScience pede-se a redução gradual dos combustíveis fósseis, a protecção da
biodiversidade ou um aumento da educação climática nas escolas.
This is what politicians debating global warming will look like soon
GlobalPost
March 26,
2014 · 4:45 PM UTC
https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-03-26/what-politicians-debating-global-warming-will-look-soon
By Sarah
Dougherty
"Follow
the leaders," Berlin, Germany, April 2011.
“Politicians
discussing global warming” — that’s what social media users have dubbed this
tiny puddle sculpture by Spanish street artist Isaac Cordal.
The image
has gone viral in the past few days and it’s obvious why. With sea levels
projected to rise up to three feet by the end of the century, it's a stark
reminder of our collective failure to act on climate change.
Or maybe
not.
More from
GlobalPost: Calamity Calling: A year-long investigation into how climate change
is already changing our world
As it turns
out, Cordal's sculpture is actually called “electoral campaign” and it's part
of a larger street art installation called “Follow the leaders.” The tiny
cement figures, arranged in bleak scenes of urban disintegration, represent the
faceless businessmen who run our capitalist global order.
“These
pieces reflect our own decline,” says Cordal. “We live immersed in the collapse
of a system that needs change.”
Cordal installs
the 15 to 25 cm tall sculptures in streets and public spaces across Europe,
then photographs them to document their presence. The ongoing work — called
“Cement Eclipses” — is meant as social critique, he explains to Phaidon:
“It refers
to this collective inertia that leads us to think that our small actions cannot
change anything. But I believe that every small act can contribute to a big
change. Many small changes can bring back social attitudes that manipulate the
global inertia and turn it into something more positive.”
While
“Politicians discussing global warming” turns out to be a misnomer, it’s
surprisingly attuned to Cordal's vision. As design professor Stuart Candy
comments on his blog:
“Intriguing
how one audience member recontextualising the artist's work with an alternative
title (whether accidentally or deliberately doesn't really matter) gives that
work startling potency and a new lease of life.”
Cordal has
even addressed climate change in some of his past work. A 2012 installation —
“Waiting for climate change” — depicts tiny figures along the Belgian coastline
confronting global warming with varying degrees of concern.
Isaac
Cordal's "Waiting for climate change," Beaufort04, De Panne, Belgium,
March 2012 (ArTIVISM/Facebook)
A 2013
installation of the same name depicts life-sized figures in business suits
floating in the Château des Ducs de Bretagne moat, in France. “Impassive and
blasé, they absently watch the water level rise,” notes the artist’s website.
The theme
of global inertia could not be more timely. This week the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meets in Yokohama, Japan to discuss
“the impact that rising temperatures will have on humans, animals and
ecosystems over the next century,” reports the BBC.
The
Yokohama meeting will produce the second of three reports updating the world on
the state of the climate — a process last undertaken in 2007. The first report,
issued September 2013, highlighted the physical science evidence for
human-induced climate change.
Climate Crisis Tipping Points Are Now Imminent, Scientists Warn
Deutsche WelleJul. 28, 2021 11:41AM ESTSCIENCE
The
Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite measures sea surface height and other
ocean surface features such as wind speed and wave height. Red-orange areas
show regions where sea level was higher than normal, and blue areas show
regions where it was lower than normal, on June 9, 2021. NASA Earth Observatory
Thousands
of scientists reiterated calls for immediate action over the climate crisis in
an article published Wednesday in the journal BioScience.
"The
extreme climate events and patterns that we've witnessed over the last several
years — not to mention the last several weeks — highlight the heightened
urgency with which we must address the climate crisis," said Philip Duffy,
co-author of the study and executive director of the Woodwell Climate Research
Center in the US state of Massachusetts.
Two years
ago, more than 10,000 scientists from around 150 countries jointly declared a
global climate emergency. They are now joined by over 2,800 more signatories in
urging the protection of life on Earth.
Since the
2019 declaration, Earth has seen an "unprecedented surge" in
climate-related disasters, researchers noted.
What Are
the Signs?
For the
study, researchers relied on "vital signs" to measure planetary
health, including greenhouse gas emissions, glacier thickness, sea-ice extent
and deforestation. Out of 31 signs, scientists found that 18 hit record highs
or lows.
The year
2020 was the second-hottest year since records began, scientists said. And
earlier this year, the carbon dioxide concentration in the Earth's atmosphere
was higher than at any time since measurements began.
The authors
noted that all-time low levels of ice mass have been recorded in Greenland and
Antarctica. Glaciers are melting 31% faster than they did just 15 years ago,
they added.
Meanwhile,
the annual loss rate of the Brazilian Amazon reached a 12-year high in 2020.
Tim Lenton,
director of the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute and co-author
of the study, said the recent record-breaking heat wave in the western United
States and Canada showed that the climate had already begun to "behave in
shocking, unexpected ways."
"We
need to respond to the evidence that we are hitting climate tipping points with
equally urgent action to decarbonize the global economy and start restoring
instead of destroying nature," he said.
How Can We
Respond to the Climate Crisis?
Researchers
reiterated calls for transformative change, listing three main emergency
responses in the immediate term:
Climate
change should be included in core curricula in schools worldwide to raise
awareness, the authors said.
Scientists
also urged slashing pollutants, stabilizing the human population and switching
to plant-based diets.
"We
need to stop treating the climate emergency as a standalone issue — global
heating is not the sole symptom of our stressed Earth system," said
William Ripple, a lead author of the study and professor of ecology at Oregon
State University's College of Forestry.
"Policies
to combat the climate crisis or any other symptoms should address their root
cause: human overexploitation of the planet."
Reposted
with permission from DW.
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