We will survive climate disruption — but the loss of nature, and ocean acidification is a different proposition.

We continue to catalogue the loss of nature and do nothing to stop it happening. The WWF Living Planet Report 2024 shows that monitored wildlife populations fell by an average of 73% between 1970 and 2020. Our index shows that marine animal life has fallen by up to 65% since 1850, and the figure compares this loss with the great extinctions of the past.

We can learn to live with climate change, but our future depends on restoring marine life and nature on land.

About 44% of the mapped ocean surface is already below its winter threshold for shell-building animals. It is too late simply to do no harm, and cutting carbon dioxide, although essential, will not be enough on its own. Without active intervention, our scenario shows marine animal life falling to about 22% of its 1850 level by 2035, a loss of about 80%, beyond which recovery is very unlikely. That would leave far fewer whales, seals, seabirds and fish, and it would threaten the food of over 3 billion people and the incomes of around 600 million.

Nature and the climate are going to reset, and unless we act now, our way of life will bear no resemblance to the present.

Practical solutions are already on the table, and they need to start now. We propose biomimicry that copies the ocean’s natural vortex, releasing seawater aerosol modified with sulphate, ferric iron, oil and silica particles, which act as nuclei for water vapour to condense and form clouds, and restore the ocean’s surface skin, the surface microlayer (SML). For human-made carbon dioxide, we propose spreading 10 billion tonnes of olivine a year, together with crushed limestone on farmland, to help draw carbon dioxide out of the air. Both actions must be carried out alongside an end to the toxic sterilisation of the planet, followed by ecosystem restoration and the elimination of all forms of pollution.