COPE VCC News
[Aug 03, 2026] Sign the Declaration of the Planetary Emergency: In the paper “ World scientists’ warning to humanity: a third notice” the Alliance of World Scientists includes the “Declaration of a planetary emergency.” The declaration states: “We, the undersigned, recognize that Earth is now in a state of planetary emergency. Climate change, biodiversity loss, land and freshwater degradation, pollution, and unsustainable production and consumption are destabilizing the Earth system that supports all life.”
You can sign the declaration here ...
[Jul 18, 2026] The lack of self-reflection is the root cause of collapse: In the blog titled “Why Every Civilization Collapses: The Great Filter as a Failure of Second-Order Observation,” Elizabeth Halligan identifies the root cause of why our societies all tend to collapse: ”Humans are locked in amygdala dominance, refusing to self-reflect, adapt, and evolve, actively engineering the collapse of their own reality.” [...] &lqduo;Because the amygdala physically suppresses the very hardware required to execute an exit condition, the entire civilizational system gets trapped. The brain attempts to solve complex, modern systemic crises using a primitive, emergency survival script.” While many experts trying to get to the root cause of collapse, they get stuck in surficial aspects like environmental impacts, mismanagement, institutional failure, the root is in the cognitive threshold. To survive the “Great Filter,” “a system must develop second-order intelligence — the capacity to observe, model, and actively regulate its own observational and behavioral loops.”
[Jun 08, 2026] Third World Ocean Assessment Underlines the Severe Stress on Oceans : The Third World Ocean Assessment “documents a deepening crisis, as climate change, pollution, overfishing and biodiversity loss put ocean systems under severe strain. Its findings demand urgent action, through stronger multilateral cooperation, greater ambition and decisions grounded in the best available science.” The article “‘Severe’ stress on oceans as rate of sea level rise doubles in 10 years, UN warns” by Karen McVeigh published in the Guardian discusses the key findings and action needed.
[Jun 04, 2026] ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: This is what the Global Justice Report published today by the World Inequality Lab makes very clear. Read the article by Jonathan Watts in the Guardian as an introduction. In an Opinion article also in the Guardian, several of the authors of the report, Thomas Piketty, Lucas Chancel, Cornelia Mohren, Rowaida Moshrif, Moritz Odersky and Anmol Somanchi, state that a good life for the 99% isn’t a pipe dream, and they explain how it can be done. “Our plan is radical – but by transforming how we live on a finite planet, nearly everyone gains.”
While this equal and habitable world is still possible, it is very unlikely that we will transition to this world as long as greedy and unethical billionaires supported by governments they own compete to be the first trillionaire. The report underlines that the fight for an equal and habitable world has to be a fight against a system that rewards extraction and depletion of all resources and requires infinitely growing consumption devouring the Earth's life-support system; a system designed to increase inequality and sustain the exploitation of almost all to serve the greed of a few!
[May 17, 2026] The American epoch of oil is collapsing.: Jonathan Watts presents an excellent analysis of the on-going energy transition from fossil fuels to electricity in the article titled “The American epoch of oil is collapsing. What comes next could be ugly” published in the Guardian. China is the leader in this energy transition, and global leadership may well shift back to China.
[Apr 19, 2026] Earth Energy Imbalance is Increasing Rapidly: Finally the extreme increase in the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is slowly starting to make headlines - far too late, though. The article “ What are zettajoules – and what do they tell us about Earth’s energy imbalance?” by Jonathan Watts published in the Guardian explains some of the basics. Importantly, the EEI double within only 13 years. In another article by Watts also in the Guardian and titled “ Earth being ‘pushed beyond its limits’ as energy imbalance reaches record high” the author points out that the World Meteorological Organization warned that Earth is struggling with a record energy imbalance, which is warming the oceans to unprecedented levels, making weather more extreme and threatening health and food supplies. Considering that Earth is more like a pool house with a very large pool than a greenhouse, the ocean is only delaying the heating of the atmosphere but not preventing it.
Platform News
[Aug 11, 2026] CitizenForum VCC opened: The "Citizen Forum Norfolk and World VCC" has been initialized and is open now.
[Aug 03, 2026] Alliance of World Scientists Declares Planetary Emergency: In the paper “ World scientists’ warning to humanity: a third notice” the Alliance of World Scientists includes the “Declaration of a planetary emergency.” The declaration states: “We, the undersigned, recognize that Earth is now in a state of planetary emergency. Climate change, biodiversity loss, land and freshwater degradation, pollution, and unsustainable production and consumption are destabilizing the Earth system that supports all life.”
You can sign the declaration here ...
[Aug 03, 2026] Hothouse Earth: arriving sooner than you think…: Julian Cribb writes in his latest blog: “Latest measurements, carefully analysed to exclude anomalies such as El Nino, reveal a planet cooking up at a steady 0.48 degrees per decade since 2015, in what is thought to be the most rapid heating event in all its geological history.” We are experiencing the most rapid heating event in Earth's billions of years long history! We have caused this event with a few hundred years of sole focus on unlimited growth using all the ancient solar energy accumulated by Earth's biosphere over more than 250 million years - just because we could! That is something to reflect on!
[Jun 04, 2026] ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: This is what the Global Justice Report published today makes very clear. Read the article by Jonathan Watts in the Guardian as an introduction. While this equal and habitable world is still possible, it is very unlikely that we will transition to this world as long as greedy and unethical billionaires supported by governments they own compete to be the first trillionaire. The report underlines that the fight for an equal and habitable world has to be a fight against a system that rewards extraction and depletion of all resources and requires infinitely growing consumption devouring the Earth's life-support system; a system designed to increase inequality and sustain the exploitation of almost all to serve the greed of a few!
