The Royal Society is under pressure from more than 1,200 leading academics to issue a clear condemnation of the fossil fuel industry.
The academics have written to the association of the world’s most eminent scientists calling for an “unambiguous statement about the culpability of the fossil fuel industry in driving the climate crisis”.
The society has agreed to meet representatives of the academics to discuss their demands. Most of those who signed the letter to the society’s president and council are based in the UK.
The letter says: “The Royal Society has thus far failed to condemn fossil fuel companies that are building new infrastructure that will carry the world far beyond 1.5 degrees of warming and that are lobbying across the world to dictate the pace and terms of an energy transition that will protect their profits at the planet’s expense.”
The companies were “committing an unprecedented act of violence against humanity”, the letter said, referring to a statement from the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
“It is imperative that our premier scientific institutions recognise this fact and condemn the agents in question, and the governments that permit their activities, in the strongest possible terms.”
Jason Scott-Warren, a professor of early modern literature and culture at Cambridge University and the organiser of the letter, said it was the result of “a sense of frustration that the Royal Society, our leading scientific institution in the UK, was not backing up the powerful statements of Guterres and others”.
