Environment:

Global Warming

Many scientists warn that global warming (also known as global climate change) is the greatest environmental threat faced by our planet; it also serves as the most poignant example of how corporate abuse impacts both people and the natural environment. The Sierra Club describes this phenomenon:

"The Earth is only 5 to 9 degrees warmer today than it was 10,000 years ago during the last ice age. Throughout history, major shifts in temperature occurred at a rate of a few degrees over thousands of years. They were accompanied by radical ecological changes, including the extinction of many species. Manmade global warming is occurring much faster - faster, in fact, than at any time in the past 10,000 years. Unless we slow and ultimately reverse the buildup of greenhouse gases, we will have decades, not millennia, to try to adapt to radical changes in weather patterns, sea levels and serious threats to human health. Increased flooding, storms and agricultural losses could devastate our economy. Plants and animals that cannot adapt to new conditions will become extinct. The world's leading scientists project that during our children's lifetimes, global warming will raise the average temperature of the planet by 2.7 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

But How Much of a Difference Can a Few Degrees Make? P L E N T Y.

The human race is engaged in the largest and most dangerous experiment in history - an experiment to see what will happen to our health and the health of our planet when we change our atmosphere and our climate. This is not some deliberate scientific inquiry. It is an uncontrolled experiment on the environment of the Earth, and we're gambling our children's future on its outcome. The results of this pollution are already significant. We have increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary global warming gas, in our atmosphere by 30 percent in the past 100 years. Some regions of the world have already warmed by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Physicians at Harvard University and Johns Hopkins medical schools and other medical institutions have issued grim assessments that global warming may already be causing the spread of infectious diseases and increasing heat-wave deaths. Extreme weather events have become more common. Plants and animals around the world are shifting their ranges in an effort to escape a changing climate.

The rapid buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is the source of the problem. By burning ever-increasing quantities of coal, oil and gas, we are choking our planet in a cloud of this pollution. If we don't begin to act now to curb global warming, our children will live in a world where the climate will be far less hospitable than it is today."

- Sierra Club [source]

For more information about global warming and other environmental phenomena, visit the Sierra Club on the Internet.