“With this declaration, we outline the scale of the threat of climate change, and we provide the best possible advice,” says Brian P. Schmidt, Nobel laureate and a spokesperson for the Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change.He continues that he feels a “moral bound duty as a scientist on an issue that has such lasting consequences.” Four Nobel Laureates met with Brian Schmidt on Thursday, one day before the signing of the declaration on Mainau island of Lake Constance on the last day of the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. These five scientists discussed this threat to mankind and possible steps and solutions: Steven Chu, former US Secretary of Energy, George Smoot, David Gross, Peter Doherty, and Schmidt, a Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist.
The declaration text itself states: “If left unchecked, our ever-increasing demand for food, water, and energy will eventually overwhelm the Earth’s ability to satisfy humanity’s needs, and will lead to wholesale human tragedy.”Gross tells his fellow laureates and the attending journalists how he just visited Ladakh in the Himalayas: “These are fragile communities, they are very dependent on the rivers that spring from the Himalayan glaciers, and they are the ones that suffer first.” He points out that in the future, there might even be wars fought over water in several regions of the world. Doherty quotes from the Lancet Commission’s latest report: “They say that we may expect the breakdown of civil society in 21. century. And the poor on the planet are going to be the most affected, as always.” All Nobel Laureates discussing the declaration in Lindau on Thursday morning agree unanimously that there is overwhelming evidence that emissions of greenhouse gases cause global warming. “There might be some uncertainties left,” concedes Chu. “It’s like in the 1950s when people didn’t know what happened if you smoked one pack of cigarettes per day – but the lung cancer rate was rising so rapidly that something had to be done.” Nowadays we can calculate the cancer risk of smoking quite precisely. “But do we want to wait fifty years until we know what will happen with global warming?”, he asks. Chu adds: “You don’t wait until your house is on fire before you take out fire insurance.” Doherty gives another analogy: when the HI virus was first discovered, many people, even scientist, doubted its role in the AIDS epidemic. But once the virus’ life cycle was understood and could be disrupted with antiviral drugs, most denial dropped.

Some of the signatories of the Mainau Declaration 2015 on Climate Change on stage just after the signing. Image: Ch. Flemming/Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.
Chu concludes: “I’m a technological optimist and political optimist. It is possible to find a solution, but we’re running against the clock,” because change is getting more urgent – and more expensive – all the time.