More people are joining the battle against climate change

L ater this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ scientific taskforce on the subject, will deliver its first major report in four years. It will outline in detail the devastating consequences that await us if we do not keep average global temperatures within 1.5°C of the pre-industrial level. Despite existing government and industry commitments, we have already reached the 1°C mark, and the impacts are terrible. We need urgent change.

Fortunately, immediate action to reduce greenhousegas emissions confers immediate benefits. When eight coal-and oil-fired power plants were retired in California between 2001 and 2011, the fertility rate in mothers living close to each facility increased within just one year.

To usher in a new era of clean air and better health, communities around the world are speaking out, making it clear to decision-makers that a fossil-fuel-free economy is what the public wants. They will continue to demand action to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and to deploy more just and sustainable forms of energy.

The science on climate change is sound, the technologies for addressing it are already available, and the necessary financing is being mobilized. In addition, a rapidly growing social movement has been inspired by the universal benefits of a clean energy future: people are ready to be the change they want to see in the world.

— Excerpted from a column by Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and convener of Mission 2020. May Boeve is Executive Director at 350.org. — Project Syndicate