By Alex Kirby
Do you ever feel you can’t share the reality of what you know about the climate crisis? A new scientists’ oath could help.
− If you devote your working life to extending what we know about the climate crisis and how we may face it, you can now take a scientists’ oath, a pledge committing you to tell the unvarnished facts: uncompromising public statements explaining how grave the reality is.
Two UK-based groups are urging climate scientists and researchers to promise full disclosure: what their evidence shows, what it requires from them and from the rest of us in our personal lives, coupled with a demand for a matching response from their employers.
The pull-no-punches initiative is the brainchild of Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Rapid Transition Alliance (which helps to fund the Climate News Network). It has a parallel in long-established practice in the medical world: Hippocrates, a physician born in Greece around 2,500 years ago, was known as the Father of Medicine, and many newly-qualified doctors today adopt what is still called the Hippocratic oath, an ethical code designed to guide their professional conduct.
This modern successor, A science oath for the climate: a pledge of scrutiny, integrity and engagement, has already attracted the support of a number of internationally-renowned climate experts. Its language is spare, but its purpose is beyond doubt: those who know what climate change is doing must warn the world:
“Science has no higher purpose than to understand and help maintain the conditions for life to thrive on Earth. We may look beyond our planet with wonder and learn, but this is our only viable home.
Our dwelling though is critically threatened by the loss of the stable climate which has allowed humanity to flourish. We pledge to act in whatever ways we are able, in our lives and work, to prevent catastrophic climate disruption.
To translate this pledge into a force for real change, we will:
- explain honestly, clearly and without compromise, what scientific evidence tells us about the seriousness of the climate emergency
- not second-guess what might seem politically or economically pragmatic when describing the scale and timeframe of action needed to deliver the 1.5°C and 2°C commitments, specified in the Paris Climate Agreement. And, speak out about what is not compatible with the commitments, or is likely to undermine them
- to the best of our abilities, and mindful of the urgent need for systemic change, seek to align our own behaviour with the climate targets, and reduce our own personal carbon emissions to demonstrate the possibilities for change.
With courtesy and firmness, we will hold our professional associations, institutions and employers to these same standards, and invite our colleagues across the scientific community to sign, act on and share this pledge.”
One signatory, Chris Rapley, is well-known for his work in Antarctica and in the communication of climate science. Professor Rapley told the Climate News Network: “The climate crisis is unfolding before us. Our ability to retain some control of our climate destiny is slipping away.
“The climate science community has a duty to speak what it knows in the hope of evoking the necessary scale and pace of societal response. The oath commits us to doing so.”
To see who has already signed the science oath − and to add your name − click here.
Hippocrates was honoured as the first doctor to distinguish medicine from superstition − no bad example for those working today to convince a hesitant world that there is a vital difference between climate fact and fiction. − Climate News Network
