No Place to Hide: Our Only Choice for a Global Green Renaissance

A call to action from Jean-Claude Burgelman, Executive Director of the Frontiers Planet Prize.

Jean-Claude Burgelman addresses the Frontiers Planet Prize community at the 3rd Edition Award Ceremony, 17th of June, 2025.

Three years ago, the Frontiers Planet Prize was born from a bold ambition: to create a ‘Nobel Prize for Sustainability’ focused on the health of our planet. Grounded in the science of the 9 planetary boundaries, we set out to spotlight and accelerate groundbreaking research from around the world.

Science holds the key to keeping humanity within Earth’s safe operating space.

Now entering its third edition, the Prize continues to grow in reach and impact. Each year brings a surge of outstanding contributions from scientists and institutions worldwide, building a global community of planetary champions. With the calibre of research rising, we are well on our way to becoming the Nobel equivalent for sustainability science. As this global community expands and accrues expanding scientific excellence, so too does our mission to inspire, elevate, and drive the science we need for a thriving planet.

What sets the Frontiers Planet Prize apart is its focus on real-world impact. This is not just a prize for excellent science; it is a prize for science that accelerates solutions to the planet’s most urgent challenges. The Prize seeks out research that doesn’t just advance knowledge, but drives transformative change, science with the power to move from publication to planetary action, faster.  

Last year, the theme of our award ceremony was “No Time to Waste.” This sentiment only becomes truer, one year later, we have even less time to waste. According to the recent analysis of the World Meteorological Organization, we will exceed the critical 2°C threshold above pre-industrial temperatures within the next five years. And this only factors in 1 of our 9 planetary boundaries.  

The 2023 update to the Planetary boundaries. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Credit: "Azote for Stockholm Resilience Centre, based on analysis in Richardson et al 2023"

All scientific evidence is unfortunately pointing in the same direction: nearly all planetary boundaries are being pushed beyond their limits.

So, what are our choices? (Ignorance, fatalism, or the FPP approach)  

First, we could choose to ignore it. In a culture of climate conspiracy, we could question the evidence, cast doubt, and ensure that no action is taken. This approach has been evident among leaders in some Western countries, not only in response to the climate crisis, but also during the COVID pandemic. Deliberate efforts to foster scientific skepticism appear aimed at preserving the status quo.  

But scientists know better. Armed with a plethora of empirical evidence validated by thousands of experts, we understand that inventing a conspiracy does not solve this problem; it only delays it for the worse.  

Instead, some would argue we should accept the planetary crisis as an inevitability, complex beyond remedy. This, the second choice, is adaptation to a world in decline. Three weeks ago, at a prestigious Financial Times conference, it was asserted several times that we must adapt to an environment 2 degrees beyond the threshold. This narrative placates climate change not as a temporary overshoot, as Johan Rockstrom explains it, but through the lens of fatalism, ‘it is too late to change’.  

But there is no bravery in this attitude. Hoping to make the best of this is a resignation to a false inevitability, a retreat behind borders. It is hope, or expectation, that someone else will take the lead and solve the problems for us, a hands-off approach to environmentalism, as is bon ton in the present geopolitics of deglobalisation.  

This choice is also poor scientific practice. If fatalism were a part of the scientific method, we would never have seen the global breakthroughs of the past 300 years. We never would have eradicated world hunger, child mortality, invented the steam engine, electricity, biodegradable plastic, etc. Put simply, we would have no scientific progress.  

These markers of scientific revolution and societal progress were sparked by the pursuit of a single bright scientific idea, not by giving in to fatalism.

So, if we can even claim to have the luxury of choice, what is the only choice left?

All that we must do is assume responsibility. We must assume our responsibility as the scientific community, as businesses, and as policymakers. There is no place to hide from the planetary crisis, and the understanding that this is our responsibility is within itself a rally against fatalism, cynicism, and defeat. Our only option is to do more, much more, and on a planetary scale.  

With 2050 on the horizon, we have only one generation to make a difference. Humanity will either witness the beginning of dangerous and irreversible decline or be a part of the emergence of a redesigned Anthropocene, led by scientific breakthrough.  

We no longer have the space to hide from the planetary crisis, but momentum is building. Across sectors and regions, real action is already underway, driving the global green renaissance we urgently need into reality.

In fact, we have reinvented our society many times before. From the agrarian era to the industrial and digital revolutions, to the rise in knowledge-driven economies. Each of these redesigns was met with scepticism, resistance, fatalism, or fear; a polycrisis of push back. We know of the early resistance to tractors and railways. Think of the Luddites, then resistance to the internet, and now the panic about AI. This cycle continues as our lives continue to be improved by the daunting revolutions of the past.  

Despite notable global leaders positioning themselves as deniers and cynics, however, the ‘inconvenient’ scientific truth will withstand the test of time, of which we cannot say the same for them. All public opinion polls show overwhelming global support for stronger measures to tackle the crisis. The European Commission, still the largest open market in the world, is on track to meet its 2030 emissions targets. China is electrifying its energy supply at a record pace. A generation ago, no one believed solar power or renewable energy could rival conventional energy. A generation ago, electric cars were laughed away. A generation can thus make the difference - we can make the difference - because people accept change when new and better opportunities are on the table.  

And that’s exactly what science needs to provide.

So here we circle back to the mission of the prize: to show the world that there is a way out, to show that we can usher in a green renaissance. This is a global mission, and the 2025 Award Ceremony showed how we can bring the scientific community together and inspire many others to join our mission. This is the bedrock of the FPP: the scientists who do not hide. Since the prize’s conception 3 years ago, we have been driven by the energy and ingenuity that scientists around the world are bringing to this challenge. We are here to face this with them. None of us wants to hide!

Hands up! The wonderful FPP community at the 2025 Awards Ceremony.