The fourth Global Environment Outlook report (GEO-4) released by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in October 2007, prepared by about 390 experts, points out that population growth combined with unsustainable consumption has resulted in an increasingly stressed planet.  The report makes an urgent call for action and says: “Fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved.”   Humanity’s survival will be largely determined by the decisions individuals and society make now. GEO-4 says: “Our common future depends on our actions today, not tomorrow or some time in the future.”

If you would like to find out how lifestyles, especially food choices, affect the health of the planet, please visit our “In Balance With Nature” page.   If you are ready to take action today to help save the planet, please visit our “How To Start” page. 

Window of Opportunity for Effective Action is Rapidly Closing

On June 23, 2008, twenty years after his first testimony in front of Congress alerting the public to the catastrophic consequences of human-induced climate change, Dr. James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified again to Congress about global warming.  The messages then and now share striking similarities, with one big difference – “now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb,” said Dr. Hansen, “time is running out.”  The statement he issued that day was titled “Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near”.

If you think the scenario presented by Dr. Hansen is a bit too gloomy, you are probably not aware of what other experts have also been saying about the Arctic, which is considered to be the barometer of global warming:

• The effects of global warming are “accelerating at a pace that goes beyond the scenarios and models we've been using.” -- Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director, October 2007
• “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming… and now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died.” – Dr. Jay Zwally, NASA climate scientist, December 2007
• “The frightening models [of Arctic sea-ice loss] we didn't even dare to talk about before are now proving to be true… According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015…And it's probably going to happen even faster than that.” —  
  Dr. Louis Fortier, scientific director of the Canadian research network ArcticNet, November 2007
• “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007… So given that fact, you can argue that maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative” — Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski, Naval Postgraduate School, California, December 2007
• “The Arctic is creaming.” – Dr. Mark Serreze, senior scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, December 2007

Witnessing the worsening of the Arctic melt in summer 2008, scientists warn that a global warming ‘tipping point’ is taking place.

• “We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point.  It’s tipping now.  We’re seeing it happen now,” – Dr. Mark Serreze, senior scientist, NSIDC, August 2008

The melt in sea ice has kicked in a long predicted effect called “Arctic amplification” - global warming initiates sea ice melt, which exposes the darker ocean, which in turn absorbs more sunlight, which melts even more ice.  On top of that, researchers investigated "alarming" reports in late August 2008 of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea.  Giant burps of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a warming effect 23 times as great as that of carbon dioxide, is a long feared effect of warming in the Arctic.  Methane will accelerate warming even more.

Commenting on the shrinking Arctic sea ice and new reports of the release of methane, Dr. Bob Corell, who headed a multinational scientific assessment of Arctic conditions a few years ago, summed it up in one succinct sentence: “We’re moving beyond a point of no return.”

Let’s act now!  Let’s help save the planet before it’s too late!