This expression is not mine, but that of the UN Secretary General, António Guterrez, uttered on July 27, 2023, upon learning of the unexpected acceleration of global warming. This has reached the point where the planet is entering a boiling process, given the carelessness of human processes, especially industrialism and capitalist productivism (including China) that misuse fossil energy, coal and other greenhouse-producing elements.

The average normal climate on Earth is 15 degrees Celcius. But this average has started to rise so much that it exceeded more than 17 degrees Celcius in July 2023.

This is all due to the fact that every year about 40 billion tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere, which remains in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, plus nitrous acid and methane, which is 28 times more harmful than CO2, although it stays in the atmosphere for about 9-10 years.

The consequences of this increase can be seen in prolonged droughts, the flooding of entire regions and cities, hurricanes, extratropical cyclones such as in the south of Brazil, and fires almost everywhere on the planet. The impact on human lives is huge. The well-known journal Nature Medicine estimated that the high heat of 2022 caused 61,000 deaths in Europe alone. Let’s not even talk about Africa and Asia, or poorer countries that have seen thousands of children and elderly people killed, particularly in central India, where temperatures have been soaring.

Looking at how little the big corporations and states are doing to stop this slow but ever present rise in temperature, everything indicates that we have already reached the point of no return. Science and technology have arrived late, they cannot stop the rise, they only help to mitigate the damaging effects that will be inevitable.

But not everything is fatal. It is worth remembering that the improbable can happen: human beings, under the perception of the risk of disappearing, take a leap of consciousness, towards the noosphere as Teilhard de Chardin projected in 1933, that is, uniting heart and mind (noosefera) to change the way of producing, consuming and particularly relating to nature, feeling part of it, not its masters and taking care of it.

If we look at the biography of the Earth, we see that warming belongs to the evolution of our planet. When we did not yet exist as a species on Earth, 250 million years ago, the climate reached and remained for thousands and thousands of years at 32 degrees Celcius. A massive extinction of species of living things occurred. Later, 50 million years ago, the Earth reached 21 degrees Celcius; crocodiles and palm trees adapted to this warming but there was also a major extinction of living organisms. Closer to us, 130,000 years ago, the Earth reached the temperature we are now experiencing, 17 degrees Celcius. Many creatures disappeared and the sea rose by 6-9 meters, which would have covered the whole of the Netherlands and the low-lying northern parts of the eurozone.

This increase in the earth’s climate belongs to geo-evolution. But the current one is caused by human beings themselves, not so much by the great poor majorities, but by the populations of the opulent countries, without the right measure in their actions either in the assault on nature or in the forms of sumptuous and unsympathetic consumption. It is said that we have inaugurated a new geological era, the Anthropocene. This concept means that the greatest threat to life on the planet and to the future of nature depends on human beings. In the words of biodiversity biologist Edward Wilson, humans have behaved like the Satan of the Earth and turned the Garden of Eden into a slaughterhouse. Some go even further and refer to the necrocene, given the increasing process of death (necro) of species of living beings in the order of 70-100 thousand per year. Lately there has been talk of the pyrocene, i.e. the age of fire. This is also caused by humans but particularly because the soil has become drier, the rocks have become hotter; all it takes is dry leaves and sticks on them to produce large and devastating fires almost everywhere on the planet, even in humid Siberia.

What scenarios might we face? They are all gloomy if there is no quantum leap that defines another path and another destiny for the life-system and the Earth-system. There is no denying that the planet is getting warmer day by day. The UN agencies that monitor the evolution of this disastrous event warn us that between the years 2025-2027 we will have exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celcius predicted for 2030 by the Paris agreement in 2015. Everything has been anticipated and by this date, between 2025-2027, we will reach what is happening today, a climate that could stabilize above 35 degrees, reaching 38-40 degrees in some regions of the planet. Millions will have to emigrate because they can no longer live in their beloved homelands and crops will be totally lost. Brazil, currently one of the largest exporters of food, will see its production profoundly reduced. According to James Lovelock, (Veja, Yellow Pages, October 25, 2006) Brazil, because of its vast sunny expanse, will be one of the hardest hit by global warming and climate change. Those in agribusiness should heed these warnings, for as Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical Laudato Si: How to Care for Our Common Home, addressed to all humanity and not just Christians: “Catastrophic predictions can no longer be looked upon with scorn and irony; we would leave for the next generations too many ruins, deserts and garbage” (n.161).

This is what no one wants for their children and grandchildren. But to do so we must summon up the courage and boldness to change course. Only a radical ecological change can save the conditions that will allow our continuity on this splendid planet Earth.

Leonardo Boff is an eco-theologian and has written: The Dignity of the Earth: the cry of the poor and the cry of the Earth, Vozes, various editions; Inhabit the Earth, Vozes 2022; member of the International Initiative for the Initiative of the Earth  Charter; The Protection of the Earth, Vozes 2022.