Penning an open letter on the occasion of Earth Day, Dalai Lama and more than 100 other Nobel laureates have urged the world leaders to take immediate action on the climate crisis.
Laureates from areas of peace, literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, and economic sciences urged world leaders to take urgent and concrete steps to control and phase out the current production of fossil fuel and invest more in renewable energy.
“Climate change is threatening hundreds of millions of lives, livelihoods across every continent and is putting thousands of species at risk,” the letter read. “The burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and gas – is by far the major contributor to climate change.”
The laureates urged the leaders to invest in a “transformational plan” that will help the dependent economies to diversify from gas and coal. It would also allow all countries to “flourish through a global just transition”.
This has come as the recent UN Environment Programme report stated an expected production of 120 percent more of coal, gas, and oil by 2030.
It also points out that the Paris agreement has no mention of the coal, gas, and oil industry, which seems to be rapidly expanding, and has asked countries to lend continued support to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement.
