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Educating, lobbying, and protesting for a liveable world for all inhabitants.
Almost two decades ago, the members of the national Sierra Club voted to make fighting climate change the highest priority of the organization. The necessity of doing so has been supported over and over by scientific studies accepted by virtually all climatologists.
The Kansas Sierra Club has been directing much of its efforts over the last 20 years to increasing energy efficiency and conservation, the cheapest and cleanest way to meet increasing energy demand. We also have been in the forefront promoting renewable energy, closing fossil fuel facilities, and improving the transmission grid.
The current and imminent threats associated with the climate crisis -- human health impacts, environmental injustice, climate refugee issues, agricultural production losses, costly weather extremes, rising sea levels, government instability, declining ecosystem services and biodiversity losses -- have all been reported in detail by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The latest report, AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change — IPCC, warns that global warming can probably not be held to 1.5 ̊C the benchmark now recognized as critical to protecting life as we know it. We have only about 10 years to implement the transformational changes need to reduce greenhouse emissions to levels that will keep the average global temperature rise just to 2.0 ̊C, the target of the Paris Accord. We have reached nothing less than "a code red for humanity.”
Sierra Club recognizes that the impacts of climate change are not distributed equally around the planet. Nor do all communities have the resources to adapt. Typically, those who contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions suffer first and worst. We are committed to addressing social injustice and environmental inequity as we continue to fight climate change.