There is a strong scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. In the fall of 2018, hundreds of the world’s climate experts issued an urgent call to climate action via the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5º C and the United States Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate Assessment. The growing threat of abrupt climate disruption constitutes a state of local, regional, hemispheric, and planetary crisis on a scale never witnessed before in humankind's history. Climate disruption consequences are disproportionately suffered by low-income communities, communities of color, and other traditionally marginalized groups, and they will therefore constitute one of the most significant and most predictable forms of injustice in the 21st century. The cascade of irreversible social and ecological impacts resulting from climate change demands a new level of ethical leadership and an unprecedented transformation of institutions at all levels of society.

 

Inaction imperils the prospects of humankind.