Hello again. Today i'm pleased to share with you an
interview with Dr Bill Ripple,
who was really the spark behind the
world scientists' warning to humanity's
second notice,
and the several other warnings that have
been published since
by the Alliance of World Scientists.
The interview was conducted by Alison Green,
who took over for me as executive
director of the Scientists' Warning
initiative,
the public face of the Alliance of World
Scientists,
when I went into a short-lived semi-retirement
intended to allow me to subdue the cancer i'm currently dealing with.
I appreciate you watching and subscribing. Thank you.
Hello and welcome to Scientist Warning
TV.
I'm Alison Green and I have taken over
as the new executive director of
Scientists' Warning,
which many of you will know from
our previous things that we've put on
our channel
we are dedicated to
protecting life on earth
and raising warnings about the
climate crisis
ecological emergency. Please do take
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We're called Scientists' Warning and I
thought that
we could not have a better first guest
on my new
heroes in science series than professor
Bill Ripple,
who was the author of the second warning
to humanity
and the recent climate emergency paper. So it's a great honor to be talking to
Bill today—who is a distinguished
professor of ecology
at Oregon State University—and very
apt as well given that
today, June the 5th, is World Environment
Day.
So I can't think of a better guest
and a better day to have this this
interview. So bill I'd like to talk to you a little
bit about yourself, about your background,
and how you came to be, like, an
ecologist. And I understand
you're you're one of your interests is in researching wolves and apex
predators. So perhaps you could tell us a
little bit about about your background and who you are.
Well thank you, Alison. It's great to be
here today. I've always been interested in nature
and the environment. And, anyway, that carried
through my university education
and I eventually ended up studying
lots of different types of systems.
I worked on spotted owls in the
Pacific Northwest of the United States
for a number of years.
And they're an endangered species. So that was
quite interesting. And I also have—soon after I finished the spotted owl
work, I got interested in a project in
Yellowstone National Park. So back in 1996 I became aware of
a mystery. And this is a scientific mystery, where
the trees in Yellowstone were
declining.
These are aspen trees. And nobody really
knew why
they were dying off and not regenerating.
So we went out there and
we cored the trees and we were able to
do a tree ring study.
And we found that the aspen trees died
off
about the same time that the wolves were
killed off.
So we developed this theory that wolves
affect
their prey, and their prey affects the plants; therefore,
wolves indirectly affect the plants. So I've been working on that project
for over 20 years. But interestingly,
I've been feeling very strange the last few years, in that
the news about the global environmental
situation
is just getting—seems like it's getting
worse and worse.
So we have this... what I call the "convergence of crises."
We have a biodiversity crisis, where
we're probably in the sixth great
extinction now. That's very troubling. We have
a climate crisis that seems to be getting much worse,
and worse than predicted by scientists.
And then we have all types of other
environmental issues, like a scarcity of fresh water.
We have huge wildlife conservation problems.
We have all kinds of these environmental things that
have been bothering me. So I decided, rather than just enjoy
myself doing logical field work, I would
transform myself into a science and conservation advocate.
So that's why I started on this new path in 2017.
Sixty percent of the large carnivores in the world are
threatened with extinction. And here you can see a list of those
that are threatened. And this was shocking to me. I always
heard about the problems with different
species, but I didn't know
that most of them are threatened—including the bears and the canids and
the felids and the otters.
So back in 1992, when the warning to humanity was published—and I'm just going to read
a little bit about that and ask you a
little bit about it.
So in late 1992 the late Henry W
Kendall, former chair of the Union of
Concerned Scientists board of directors, wrote the first
warning—World Scientists' Warning to Humanity—
which begins,"Human beings in the natural
world are on a collision course...."
And a majority of the Nobel Prize
Laureates and the scientists signed the
document. And about the 1700 of the world's
leading scientists appended their signature, which is hugely
powerful, you know.You've got the world's
leading scientists and Nobel Laureates.
And I looked at that article again today,
and it calls for action now.
And it talks about critical areas, such
as atmosphere, oceans,
water resources, and so on. And for you as a scientist having looked
at that—because you must have been aware of that at the time—
were you aware of that article and did it have impact at that time?
As far as I know that
1992 warning had very little impact on policy, globally.
One thing is that '92 is before the internet became
widely used. SoHenry Kendall was able to get signatures through the
mail system. So that was quite a feat because he
got quite a few important signatures on
his 1992 warning. But then I've been researching
Kendall and the '92 warning, and I foun that
they tried to do a press release,
when they released it. They did not
actually publish it. It was just an open letter.
And they asked the press to attend a press conference
in New York City. And there was not much press.
I think one television network covered it.
And there's still a recording of that out there.
But like, for example, the New York Times
refused to even write anything about it.
That's astonishing.
In the sense it wasn't published in a journal,
it really was forgotten. And in 1997—
no, in 2017, I was giving a lecture at the
University of California,
and I was describing the world population
issue. And one of the attendees in that
lecture
talked to me afterwards and he said
thank you for talking about
population issues which most scientists don't.
And he mentioned the 1992 warning also
talked about human population crisis.
And I read that for the first time
in February of 2017, and I was struck. And I realized that it's been exactly 25
years since the first Warning to Humanity
and that since then there should be good global
environmental data over time that I could plot.
And then I thought, well, maybe I could pen
a new Warning to Humanity. So that was just conceived all of a sudden
in February of 2017, and by November it was published with 15,000 signatories.
Yeah, and that was quite
a wake-up call. The very fact that the scientific community had to issue a
second warning because the first one wasn't sufficient.
And it's interesting what you say about the—
obviously, the dissemination of the first one was  hampered, I guess, by
the internet not being what it is today and so on.
But even so, one would think that something as stark as that in '92
would have had more impact. And clearly it didn't. So I think for you in 2017,
and other scientists around the world, it
must be absolutely galling to
look back and think that these messages have been issued again
and again and again with little impact. So going on to
the 2017 paper, the Second Warning to
Humanity,
I think you sort of explained something about
why you came to do that. Do you want—can you just summarize for us
what the article actually says?
Well, what we we did in the 2017 paper—
that second warning to humanity—
we picked up on the topics of the first warning.
So we had—we made a set of graphs
that relate to the first warning. So we wanted to be able
to track how we have done over the last 25
years.
So we plotted population—human population—and we plotted
marine fisheries, and we plotted
wildlife, in terms of the decline of vertebrate species
and the abundance of vertebrate species. We plotted
the increase in ruminant livestock, and we prodded the increase in
greenhouse gas emissions, and ocean dead zones.
And these are all topics that were mentioned in the
1992 warning. And now we actually put graphs and numbers to it.
And I was personally just shocked that
everything was getting much worse.
Except for one topic that Kendall and the '92 people
worked on, and that is the ozone layer was much much better by 2017.
So we had that glimmer of hope that we can make proper
decisions and behaviors. But most everything
has gotten much much worse. And we published that, and it was—it's got
a lot of attention. And we had more than
15 000 scientists from around the world
sign that new warning.
Yeah, and that's, again, that's a huge number. So to go from 1700 endorsing the one in '92
up to 15 000—and I know that more people
signed on after.
And it's interesting—do you get a sense that the—
I mean, the one thing that improved was
the ozone hole,
or the ozone layer, but you know, that showed some improvement and
I remember that being reported in
the news.
But what wasn't reported was the fact that other things were
getting so much worse. Do you think that the the race at which
things are getting worse, do you think it's accelerating?
Yes. Yeah, I would call it a great acceleration
of these issues. Yes, it is. And it seems like
on topics like climate change, the scientists are
underestimating how bad it's going to be
at any certain time. And they keep revising
the estimates. So yeah, I think it's to the point where
I'm spending most of my time just
working on these kinds of issues. I'm very concerned.
So I think one of the phrases that we
hear again and again in the press is, "faster than expected,"
"worse than expected." So we see the frequency of the
fires— the wildfires in Australia, for
example—just increasing.
And they're becoming more and more
catastrophic. They're lasting for longer,
which is—you know, which is obviously
pretty devastating.
And I think for the ordinary person, who
doesn't really understand the data—
you know, they're not as close to it as
you and the scientists are—
But one of the questions I hear people
asking a lot is,
"Well, how bad is it really?"
How do you go about—as a scientist, how do you communicate to ordinary
people how bad things really are? Because people
don't necessarily understand
things like changes in in CO2 levels.
You know, they don't understand,
necessarily, what the,
you know, the loss of Arctic sea ice
might mean.
So how do we explain to people how
bad it really is? Do you—
Yeah, thank you for that question.
That's a difficult one. I give presentations
and I try to achieve a balance in terms of
giving the scientists warnings and—which scare people somewhat—
and at the same time giving them some hope.
But in terms of—one little story I can tell
you is
for the last three years I've been keeping track
of what the scientists are saying a little bit more privately.
And more and more, I'm seeing scientists say things like:
large areas of the earth will become
uninhabitable because of climate change.
I'm hearing some distinguished scientists
saying things like, "Oh, our future climate may
only support three billion people, or
even fewer."
So these are simple concepts. But one issue that they have is that
there's a lot of uncertainty about this. And another one is
it's off into the future, which doesn't get the attention
that an immediate deadly pandemic would
get.
So you wrote this paper. It was endorsed by huge numbers of people.
Were you hopeful that that it might trigger some significant changes,
at this point? Was there anything that gave you hope that
this might trigger some significant changes?
It might impact policy? It might be heard?
Yes, well, this was my first venture into science advocacy and
conservation advocacy at a very large
scale.
We had—it changed my life, Alison. Ever since November 13th, 2017,
my life has changed. The mass media did really a good job
of covering the paper. And social media took off with it also.
And there are a number of things that
happened
after publishing that paper. There is the citizen science—
the citizens' advocacy group, Scientists'
Warning, got started.
There's a documentary film about the
paper and my work with it, and our work.
A documentary film is in the works. There is the development of—a new
scientific organization called the Alliance of World Scientists
was started. And I'm heavily involved in operating
that organization. And for example,
we are now writing narrow-focused Scientists' Warning papers
since the the second warning came out in
2017.
And we—there's a lot of papers being
written and published with Scientists' Warning as the theme.
So I get a lot of emails from scientists in
other countries now, and it is
very rewarding to see the positive response I'm getting. They're telling me
they want to help. They want to work on changing,
not just people's behavior, but even more importantly, the way governments
can function. And policy at the global scale, and the
national and international scale. We're looking—I think the problems
we have are so severe that we need to have
systemic changes in the way that we function
a humanity on planet earth. So this takes national, international
policy changes. So there have been—
You know, just as one scientist trying to
make a difference, I'm
extremely pleased at the results. But on the larger scale
I'm much more cautious about how optimistic I am that we're actually
going to be able to turn the boat
and head in a different direction.
Yeah, it must be—I mean, I think for you in particular,
being, you know, situated in the US. And, you know, here you are, you know,
a really strong advocate for things that need to be done.
At the same time, witnessing these horrendous rollbacks of
every environmental law, policy that
has been passed.
You know, for you and your fellow scientists, it must be absolutely
galling to be trying to take steps forward and
then find that you know you're in a
sense taking a step backwards
because of all of these policy reversals. The scientists are sometimes criticized,
aren't they, for not raising their voices. And there is
this sense that there's a kind of mainstream...
almost... narrative, which is conservative, you know,
around the science. And I just wondered if you have
have a view on that. Because when I speak to scientists, it seems to
me that they are telling the truth. They are
telling it as it is. And that there isn't
some kind of watering down of that truth.
Do you have a view on that?
Well, one thing I'm noticing is scientists are
more and more willing to
tell it like it is and to speak out, more
than they used to. So I'm seeing a trend of scientists
speaking out. And I think that is essential, especially
for mid- and senior-level career scientists
that have the experience and the knowledge.
And I see them stepping up, you know. They are a fairly
highly trusted group for citizens to look to for facts and scientific information.
And I'm encouraged.
And, you know, you've been working tirelessly. So in 2017, we had the second warning to
humanity and then all the other things
you've done since.
And then, late last year, you published the—as if a second warning
wasn't enough!—this time scientists declare climate emergency!
Which makes, you know, which makes us
think, what more can scientists possibly do?
Now they've sounded the alarm. Now they're saying it's an emergency.
And, you know, that paper, when it was published back in
November, it made the headlines around
the world.
And I remember, you know, I remember
watching the news in the UK
and looking at the news stories around, you know, the world, in the US, in
Australia. It it really made the global headlines.
And it, you know, it was massively significant.
I just want to look at the paper, because a lot of my scientist colleagues
said it was a great piece of work. Because, again, you've done the research
and you've presented all of these
amazing charts and figures
that show very clearly how things are still getting worse. And you outlined six
steps in that paper, which are kind it's
like a road map
in terms of what needs to happen. I just
wondered if you could maybe talk us
through those six steps.
Oh, sure. Well thank you, Allison, for your kind words about the paper.
First of all, a little bit of background information:
What I learned on the second warning that we put
out in 2017, I used that knowledge to do
this newer paper about a scientist
warning of a climate emergency.
So that experience really helped.
And I was surprised that the response to the climate
emergency warning that we just put out
was so much bigger than the response to
the second warning in 2017. That was quite interesting.
So, anyway, on the—let me jus back up a little bit and tell you that
we did really well with the 2017 warning.
And we were going along in 2018 and then,
again, by early 2019 I was feeling really deep down that...
is there anything that I could do, like a one-time thing
to help with the climate crisis. It seemed like
the climate change and the climate
crisis was getting so much
worse that I just wanted to try something.
And I thought, okay, and I was giving a speech in
Portland, Oregon, with a congressperson from the
US House of Representatives. And he was
writing a
bill to submit to the US Congress to
declare a climate emergency.
So he and I talked, and I titled this new
paper
climate emergency. And it really took off. And my co-authors and I gathered as much
data on the climate as we could, both in the behavior
of humans that affect climate change, and
then the climatic response
So we have two main variables. It's a very short text.
This paper is available on the Bioscience website
free, just like the 2017, so all your
viewers can
read it for themselves, if they want.
So we plotted all the charts in a very simple fashion.
And again, we're finding that when we look at these vital signs
of climate change, that things are
in big big trouble. And we published
this straightforward story, where hopefully everyone can understand.
But the main thing that I want to get across
today is that this looks so serious that small
or piecemeal fixes don't seem likely to solve this problem. What I believe we
need is a revolution of
systemic changes in how humans operate
on planet earth.
And you'll see this when I mention the six steps.
So these are as big a scale as we could think of
that would directly affect the
sustainability of humans on planet earth
with a climate that would be habitable for us.
Number one is energy. So we talk about the need
to eliminate fossil fuel combustion
and substitute with other forms of energy.
So that is our number one issue
that makes a lot of sense, and it's very much needed.
Then, number two. We listed air pollution.
And a lot of what we talk about here are the short-lived pollutants,
such as methane in black carbon,
or soot that comes from combustion of materials.
So these air pollution things can really help us in climate change,
in that, for example, methane is a
short-lived gas. And if we can control that,
we can bring down some of the pressures
on climate in the next decade or two.
Then we we even get bigger as we move on
to the step three,
which is that we must restore
and protect natural ecosystems on planet earth.
So this is where—in nature is where we store and sequester huge amounts of carbon.
So for us to be successful in mitigating
climate change,
we need to preserve forests and ecosystems
and wetlands and estuaries and especially tropical forests
and grasslands and savannahs. So we talk
about preserving nature as a very important part.
Then, the next one, number four.
We talk about the food system.
Agriculture and food production is one of the biggest stressors
on climate and the environment. So we talk about the need
for humans to lower their carbon footprint and environmental
footprint by eating lower on the food chain and eating
more plants and less meat. And we we talk about the importance of
of sustainable agricultural practices.
Then we go—and number five—we move to the economy. And we think that
continued economic growth, that model is seriously flawed when we
have a finite biosphere. So our resources
are finite and we cannot continue to
have
economic growth as our goal forever. It just doesn't match up.
So we are supporting green economics with our economic suggestions.
And then finally, we talk about the population issue.
The human population really took off in the 1800s,
with the start of the burning of fossil fuels and the industrial revolution.
We had a population graph that just goes way way up in the last couple hundred years.
And a lot of that is due to us now
using tons of fossil fuels.
So we talk about the importance of us having a global discussion as to
an appropriate population size for humans. And we talk about
stabilizing population growth,
potentially reducing it.
And then, with all of these suggestions and steps,
we are emphasizing the need for social
justice.
We think there are great inequities that need to be
looked at, in terms of economic inequities and social inequities.
And we just think that it's important to prioritize
the well-being of humans all over.
So that is the context tha we're putting
everything in.
So that's our fix, right there.
And, of course, you know, all of those things make sense. And what was advocated in '92 made sense,
and earlier than that too. But there's a real issue, isn't there,
because, you know, many scientists and
economists
said that the real problem is that so much of the world's wealth is—
that 90 percent is concentrated in
you know 10 percent— 1 percent of the population.
So it's a tiny percentage of the population and they're just massively over consuming.
And so that's the crux of the problem. So I think that there is a risk
at the moment that people feel that,
you know, we can—by greening the economy
we simply switch to renewable energy,
get an EV and carry on as as before.
And of course we can't do that.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
In order to fix this environmental problem that we have today, it's going to take more than a
technological fix of building more solar panels or more wind turbines.
I don't think technology is going to save us.
Yeah, especially in the climate crisis,
I think that's why I am keen on the idea of the six steps that we're mentioning.
And green energy is just part of the first one,
in terms of the first step in the in the six.
So I think that we're going to need to have systemic changes.
And it's not just going to be an easy technological fix.
And it seems like people want that easy fix and want technology to save them—
in this "go on, business as usual,"
I think people like their creature comforts. But I think part of it is that we haven't
really been presented with a
kind of view of of what life could be like.
So I think what people are hearing
are these, you know, very unhelpful political views.
You know, people saying, "Oh, you know, you just want to go back and live in caves."
And "You want to just go back to medieval times" and, you know, those kinds of ways of living.
But just thinking about the coronavirus pandemic, which is still with us and,
you know, the US has been experiencing
really badly. And the UK, you know, we have been, you know—it's been
handled incredibly badly here. But the one really
interesting thing that came out of what
was a tragedy
was that politicians for years have been
saying that,
you know, "We can't do x, y, and z because
it will crash the economy."
And I couldn't believe that we moved into lockdown as quickly as we could in the UK.
And it was almost as if the politicians
actually found that they had a big red
button,
and they could push that button, and they
could stop the economy.
And that's obviously what they have done. So I think,
in a sense, what it's given us is, it's
given us some hope.
It, you know, it's shown us what can happen.
It's not by any means a positive thing. But it's shown us that it is possible to stop the economy.
And I wondered if—so off the back of the climate emergency paper in November,
where you're saying we've got a climate and ecological emergency...
then we have the coronavirus pandemic,
and the World Health Organization saying this is a pandemic.
And people responded appropriately to the pandemic.
They responded and treated it as if it was an emergency, which of course it was.
But why didn't they do that when you were sounding the alarm and saying
we've got a climate emergency. And then, you know, this—and arguably—well it's
not arguably. I would say—and I'm sure many would agree—that the climate and
ecological crisis is a threat to life on the planet.
It's a threat to—you know, we're seeing massive rates of extinction.
So why, why is it? Do you have any
thoughts as to why people
responded differently to the coronavirus
than they did to the climate and
the declaration of climate emergency?
Yes, good question. I think the massive, quick response to Covid-19 was mainly due to
because it's an immediate threat to the health and well-being of individuals.
So that threat was so immediate—and is so immediate—
that it gets a response, where climate is much more chronic and moving along at a different scale.
And it's not such an individual personal threat for people like the virus is.
But so I think that
we did do some amazing behavioral
changes
for the for the coronavirus. And that gives me some hope that we can do changes.
But the two problems are
somewhat different. But in some ways they have
solutions that are similar.
So if you look at our six steps, when we talk about
agriculture and food and population and economy,
those can affect the risk of pandemics, just like the risk of climate crisis.
I think that is such a good point.
And in talking to some psychologists recently,
when I did an Ask A Scientist live event, and put exactly that question to them.
And they said, well, one of the issues with climate
science is that, if you report changes in CO2 levels,
for an ordinary person that doesn't seem
very threatening.
If you're reporting with death rates,
that's threatening. That's meaningful.
You know, in your town, in your neighborhood, say 50 percent of the people,
you know, wow! That's—but a rise in CO2 levels?
It's not immediately obvious how that's going to impact us, and how it's
going to affect us. Okay, the one last question I'd like
to put to you. And it picks up on
on risk, and it picks up on some work.I  think it was John Cena, but he's been
talking about the difference between—we've got the
reaction time and intervention time.
So the reaction time is how much time we need to actually respond.
And then intervention time is how much time we actually need to make it.
And if there is a—so long as we have
enough time to do an intervention, then we can still act.
But once we've run out of that time, then.... So recently an article came out which
suggested that humanity, within the next
few years,
will reach a crossroads. We're going to have a decision
foisted upon us. And we're going to have to decide
whether we're going to continue down one
route,
which will be pretty much where we are,
not doing things fast enough.
Or are we going to finally realize that
life cannot go on as it currently is, and we're going to have to make a change.
And I guess the question that I'm going to put to all the scientists I speak to is:
Which way do you think we're going to go?
Do you have a sense of where you think humans actually going to go and why?
Well, this is going to be a new experiment for humans. We've never been through this.
One thing I know is that nature is very resilient.
I see that all the time. And so that gives me hope that,
regardless of how fast we act
and how much we do at any one period,
there is hope for the resilience of nature. And somehow,
it's going to work out. Now, on the other hand,
I can't believe how dire this situation is.
It's causing people to have climate depression.
And some people are giving up hope. I'm an optimist.
I am going to continue to have hope. And at the same time try to do what I can,
in terms of helping make the information that's needed available
for huge changes on planet earth. And then the second point I want to make is that
I think that we will get much more reaction from individuals and governments
after there's more suffering.
So as we move into climate suffering, I think we will see a much bigger reaction than we have so far.
So in terms of the timelines, are we going to have enough time to make the changes?
I don't know about the timelines that you're outlining.
I'm just thinking that we should put our heads down and do everything we can.
And see how it shakes out.
Now, as a scientist, I find this climate breakdown very interesting.
And the environmental breakdown interesting. But as a human, I'm horrified. And it's just very unsettling.
But, again, as a human and a scientist I just want to do what I can to make a small
contribution to help towards a sustainable future.
Thank you. I think that's a good note to end on.
Obviously, you've already made a huge contribution.
Because you've been working
relentlessly. You put out those warnings.
You've had many thousands of
people globally endorse them. And and we're doing what we can as
Scientists' Warning to put that message out there. Of course,
we have got some reason to have
hope, I think, in the integrity of humanity, because we only
have to look at Greta Thunberg and the striking school children,
Fridays for Future—all sorts of activist groups—
I mean, people are trying. And I think it's important to us as
a species to do what we can. We might not be able to do a huge
amount for ourselves, as a species, but the least we can do is protect life on the planet,
which is essentially what we're about.
So I'd like to thank you very much for your time and for speaking to us.
This is the first in our new series of heroes in science.
So to anyone watching, if you haven't subscribed, please look at
the subscribe button and subscribe to Scientists' Warning,
and then we will notify you of all of our future recordings. So  thank you for joining us.
Well, thank you, Alison. It's been a pleasure.
