This website grew out of the document, "Maintaining Humanity's Life Support Systems in the 21st Century," which was drafted specifically to raise awareness among world leaders and the general public of the urgency of addressing five intertwined global problems: climate change, extinctions, loss of diverse ecosystems and ecosystem services, pollution, and population growth and over-consumption. The document also paints broad-brush solutions that will be useful to policy-makers.
The group of 16 scientists that drafted the document did so in response to a conversation with California Governor Jerry Brown, who indicated that policy makers and world leaders would find such information useful, especially if endorsed by a wide spectrum of global-change scientists worldwide. In a little less than a month, more than 520 respected scientists of all age groups, from 44 countries that cover most of the world, endorsed the consensus statement. Endorsing scientists intitially included 2 Nobel Laureates and dozens of members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and equivalent scientific bodies from many countries in the world. That quickly grew to thousands of people from more than 60 countries. More people sign daily.
The initial announcement at the 2013 Sustainable Silicon Valley WEST Summit was the first step in what we regard as a long term effort to bring these issues front and center to governmental leaders, business leaders, and the general public, in order to identify and implement the solutions that are already within our reach.
