Scientists believe we have entered a period of abrupt climate breakdown. The Earth’s atmosphere is already over 1oC warmer than pre-industrial levels and the chance of staying below the 2oC limit set in the Paris Agreement is tiny. Projections show we are on course for three degrees of warming and probably much higher. The evidence is undisputable. Seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136 year record all have occurred since 2001, and global temperatures have increased by 0.9oC since 1880 (NASA/GISS, 2018). The most surprising warming is in the Arctic, where the 2016 land surface temperature was 2.0oC above the 1981-2010 average, breaking the previous records of 2007, 2011 and 2015 by 0.8oC, representing a 3.5oC increase since the record began in 1900 (Aaron-Morrison et al, 2017). A WWF report recently published has warned humanity about an irreversible collapse; the global vertebrate population has declined by 60% since 1970. In just 60 years, we have decimated natural habitats that they depend on: grasslands, forests, waterways and oceans.

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