Copenhagen 2009

Confronted by the unprecedented gravity of the dangers and the suicidal inactivity of our economic and political leaders - in particular their refusal to take the necessary measures to deal with the climate crisis - for scientists to keep silent would be an act of complicity in a major crime against humanity and the living world as a whole.

For this reason

« The scientific community calls those with political or economic power not to simply invoke « economic realism », « inevitability », or the course of history in order to excuse and tolerate the bad consequences of technological developments. Human dignity and the equilibrium of the biosphere are too important to be dismissed this way »
(Global appeal from scientists to leadership, Johannesburg 2002)

In that spirit, the World Institute of Science (WIS) fully supports the remarkable « Copenhagen Diagnosis » that should contribute, by its scientific pertinence, to a general awakening to the gravity of the situation and to the obligation to take adequate action.

The major risk evoked in this report is of « transgressing critical thresholds » of irreversibility (« tipping points ») leading to a destabilization of the climate system.

The WIS exhorts the economic and political decision makers to take care of the fragile and complex equilibrium of the climate system by reducing as quicly as possible the emissions of green house gases to the necessary levels and by effectively protecting its vulnerable elements that are rain forests.

Last, the WIS calls for the creation of a steering committee composed of the intellectual and moral elite of the scientific community, the economy, and civil society, with the aim of establishing a code of good economic conduct, on the basis of which economic development would be systematically subordinated to the overiding goal of assuring the preservation of the living world and hence the welfare and indeed the survival of our own species.