Statement on World Scientists’ Warning of climate emergency
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In response to World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency
Population Matters Director Robin Maynard says:
“The warning from over 11,000 scientists worldwide is stark: humanity must take urgent actions to avoid catastrophic threat. Those include stabilising our population, ‘still increasing by roughly 80 million people per year’, and by gradually and ethically reducing our global population. On the eve of the UN’s landmark International Conference on Population & Development in Nairobi (12 -14 November), it is indeed time as the scientists state ‘ to tell it like it is’: alongside excessive consumption, ongoing human population growth is driving that catastrophic threat.
Population Matters has long been ‘telling it like it is’, promoting positive, voluntary means for ending population growth, through empowering women, tackling poverty and ensuring everyone can use modern contraception. Not least, we have consistently highlighted that choosing to have smaller families in the developed world, where each one of us is responsible for a disproportionate volume of emissions, will take the heat off our planet, and help ensure our children’s future.
Enabling everyone to make those positive choices is key, but as those 11,000 scientists advise, so too is underpinning those individual choices within an international policy framework. PM is attending the Nairobi Conference and will be promoting that agenda for global action and an international policy framework.”
