Today the European Council is debating (behind closed doors), the proposed Nature Restoration Law – there has been heavy lobbying by several EU countries to water down the provisions. I believe this is a mistake and last week I and almost three and a half thousand other scientists signed a petition saying so.
It has now been reopened for signatures. Please do sign if you feel strongly about it. It’s worth a read anyway as the organisers (probably being scientists!) have written out what the agreement means in admirable clarity:
https://umfrage.uni-leipzig.de/index.php/837218?lang=en
Europe is a nature depleted continent already – restoring, or at least preserving what we can is going to be crucial in coming decades. And where Europe leads and sets strict environmental standards, other countries follow.
I am a climate scientist who has become increasingly interested in and concerned about biodiversity. I have had a deep love and sense of wonder about nature since I was a kid – and probably my interest in glaciers and weather and climate have in in part grown out of that. I’m not a biodiversity expert, but I am acutely aware of the impact climate change is already having on the biosphere. It is at a fundamental level very hard to separate climate from biodiversity and probably unwise to try.
In the past I’ve considered it was a scientist’s duty to advise impartially and therefore to be politically completely inactive, I have regretfully come to the conclusion that actually, maybe we as a community do need to push a little more firmly in the direction our science is actually pointing us. Perhaps it is in fact irresponsible not to be involved?
As the great atmospheric chemist and Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland once said (in 1986!):
“After all, what’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions, if in the end all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?”
Brodeur, 1986
This quote is something I have thought long and hard about myself. And I’m not the only one in the climate field for sure. If our biodiversity colleagues are also wrestling with this, then I also recommend this brilliant piece by NASA GISS scientist Gavin Schmidt in the Bulletin of Atomic scientists.
The petition I linked to above has been organised by german scientists, experts in ecology and biodiversity. They emphasise:
“Being proactive is thus important. We would therefore appreciate if you found your way of communicating this letter in your surroundings, and help delivering the science to whoever may be interested in it. The purpose is not to lobby but rather to support, to offer help, maybe even mediate where possible.”
We’re scientists and we’re also public servants.
Use us to help guide policy. If scientists are ringing alarm bells, then somewhere there is a fire…
Sterna Paradisaea 