Care2
The largest online community of people passionate about making a difference

MoveOn
A family of organizations bringing real Americans back into the political process

Green Economy: After Oil: An American Prospect Special Report
The economic and political promise of a post petroleum society

The Environment: Death and Rebirth: An American Prospect Special Report
Changing our energy policy would have immense global effects--environmental, economic, and social

A. This is the problem. Things don’t work in a linear smooth relationship, you know? You raise the temperature a little bit, and you begin to get very large cascading effects. So, for instance, across much of the West in Alaska, warmer temperatures have brought with them infestations of new kinds of insects. Those insects have killed off hundreds of thousands of square miles of forest. That forest catches fire once those trees die. All that burning forest sends yet more carbon into the atmosphere. On and on and on. We see the same kind of dynamics playing out now with this drought in the Southeast, with the ongoing drought in the Southwest. And, of course, the US has been hit less hard by these changes than much of the rest of the world so far. What’s important to remember and the reason that we spend all our time organizing now, trying to change all this, is that so far human beings have raised the temperature of the planet about one degree Fahrenheit. The computer modeling makes it very clear that before the century is out, unless we take very strong action, indeed, we’re going to raise the temperature of the planet another five degrees Fahrenheit. So, take whatever you see now, multiply it by five, and then toss in all those cascading effects that come, as we exceed one threshold after another.... (continue reading >