University of Plymouth declares a climate emergency

Professor Gerd Masselink: “If human-induced climate change is responsible, we need to seriously start thinking about decreasing our vulnerability to extreme storm events and proactively adapt to a more energetic future wave climate”

Professor Jason Hall-Spencer: “Unless we can get a grip on reducing CO2 emissions we will undoubtedly see major degradation of coastal systems worldwide”

Dr Oliver Tills: “The amount of data we are generating is vast and this is enabling us to assess the impacts of raised temperatures, salinity and more in ways that we could never have previously imagined"

Professor Camille Parmesan: “Since 2009, the impacts of climate change on wild species have become more numerous, geographically more wide-ranging and increasingly complex"

Professor Iain Stewart MBE: "Natural disasters affect people all over the world, and barely a month goes by without news of devastation to homes and people as a result of earthquakes, volcanoes or flooding"

Professor Will Blake: "Every year 12 million hectares of productive land are lost to soil erosion globally. Unless we take action now, communities who rely on the land for their survival will be left facing an increasingly uncertain future”

Dr Zaki Ahmed: “We have become addicted to energy, we can’t get enough of it. All around us we see computers, phone chargers, flat-screen televisions, and they’re only using half of their power efficiently; I think we can do better than that”

Professor Deborah Greaves OBE: “Since the 1990s, it has been widely accepted that renewables have an essential role to play in meeting global energy challenges, with onshore wind, solar and hydropower making relevant contributions to the energy mix”

Professor John Spicer: “It would be foolhardy to pin our hopes on ‘evolutionary rescue’. Many large species will almost certainly be the first casualties of our warming, oxygen-poor ocean”