Welcome

to the fourteenth issue of the annual Biosphere Expeditions Magazine.

With the pandemic at a stage where we could start running expeditions again from March 2023, we initially thought we would create a happy-clappy issue called “Resurrection”, showing lots of people having fun on expeditions again and how our local partners survived to work with us once more. Then the summer in the northern hemisphere happened with searing heat, droughts, wildfires, coral bleaching and more – conditions that many scientists predicted for the 2030s, not now. It is clear that the climate emergency has arrived. It is ahead of schedule and it is hitting humanity as hard as science has predicted for decades, or harder – but certainly earlier.

In the last issue we talked about the 2020s being the crucial decade to turn around this supertanker heading for the wall at full speed. This still holds true, but now with more urgency. We – society, governments and each and every one of us – need to take action now. So this is not the time for pretending things are “back to happy normal” again. This is the time to call a spade a spade, to talk about the elephant in the room, the dire straits humanity is in. The planet does not care and will continue to exist, it has weathered bigger storms than the one created by humankind today. The question is whether humanity and civilisation as we know it will survive. It is on a knife edge and the outlook is not good. The time has come to fight – against the deniers, the corporations and their willing helpers in government that put profit before the survival of civilisation, and our own tardiness to change our comfortable lifestyles. We all need to make changes individually (see the Top 5 on page 50) and we need to change the system, because this is a make or break moment.

So this issue is a reality check on the situation we find ourselves in, an attempt to reach those who are in their comfortable ‘it ain’t that bad / recycling is enough’ bubbles. It is not enough and it is bad. Read the articles and you will see, then take action! If you want, take our Top 5 tips as a starting point – stop eating meat, get rid of your car, stop flying (to expeditions and instead select a more local one), come off the fashion bandwaggon and become an activist! We need 3.5% of the population to reshape society and we need to do it now. Indeed, I believe that if we want to be able to look our grandchildren in the eye, then we have a duty to act to save humankind and civilisation from sliding into destruction.

Dr. Matthias Hammer Founder & Executive Director