Today marks the world’s first Climate Emergency Day because at 5pm (BST) this afternoon we will have less than seven years to keep global warming below 1.5C.

 

With record-breaking heatwaves ravaging the UK, mainland Europe and the US, the time is now to take action — as we’ve said at EcoSki time and again. Around the world, people are being encouraged to take a moment of silence at 5pm (and corresponding times around the world) when the Climate Clock passes from seven years to six years, 364 days, 23 hours, fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds.

 

There is a series of activities taking place around the world to mark this awful, momentous day including a ceremony in New York (where the changeover from seven years to 6:364:23:59:59) and a publicised moment of reflection in Rome, where the Ministry of Ecological Transition and National Renewable Company of Italy will observe the tick-over.

 

Climate Clock is a grassroots tool to pressure world leaders to act in time to curb global CO2 emissions in line with their commitments to the Paris Agreement to keep global warming below 1.5°C.

 

Climate Clock’s co-founder Gan Golan said: “The world’s first official CLIMATE EMERGENCY DAY is an urgent reminder that our best window of action closes as each second, hour, day, and year ticks by. It presents us with an opportunity to remind those in power that we must #ActInTime and make a necessary, bold, and rapid transition away from fossil fuels in order to avert climate catastrophe.”

 

EcoSki’s founder, Rachael Westbrook, and the wider EcoSki team including ambassadors Chemmy Alcott and Martin Hartley, will be taking a moment of silence at their respective homes, and after the week of weather we’ve had in the UK, redoubling efforts to create change.

 

Rachael said: “Imagine if the record-breaking heat we had this week remained for longer than a day? The fire brigade said they hadn’t been so busy since World War II. This is just the very start of what life will be like if we don’t stick to the 2C dictated by The Paris Agreement.

 

“To think during the last 3 million years our planet’s temperature has never exceeded 2 degrees or dropped lower than minus 4 during The Ice Age, and now in a blink of time we are rocketing out of this and heading towards an unliveable hot house, last seen in the Jurassic period.

 

“We are losing our European glaciers fast. Since 1900 we have already lost 50%, and in recent months we have seen a number of glaciers unable to open for summer skiing for the first time in history. Scientists predict we can save up to 40% of the remaining alpine glaciers if we can change the way we live and waste.

 

“All the glaciers originate from when we left the last Ice Age and they play an integral part in the cooling of our planet. If we lose them we revert back into a dinosaur state where the planet simply isn’t liveable.

 

“Everything we know and love depends on our glaciers. It’s so simple really. The ice makes the planet whiter and reflects 90% of heat back to space which helps keep the planet at a stable, cool state. If we have no ice the surface becomes much darker which means the heat is simply absorbed making our planet hotter and hotter.

 

“Fossil Fuels are of course a huge driver in all of this and when you realise 90% of the clothing we have been wearing (and wasting) is made of fossil fuels you fast realise how we have got into this mess.”