THE PLANETARY THREAT

We seek a world free of war and the threat of war. We seek a society with equity and justice for all. We seek a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled. We seek an earth restored .

—Friends Committee on National
Legislation Statement of Purpose

I look forward to the day when statisticians add up the national accounts to take account of the depreciation of our environment. When we learn to do this, we will discover that our gross national product has been deceiving us.

—Arthur Burns—former chair of
the U.S. Federal Reserve Board

Imagine a planet that will still be healthy for our children and grandchildren. A planet capable of producing the food necessary to feed a growing population. A planet with clean air to breathe, ocean beaches to soothe our spirits, and ample water to sustain life. Imagine a planet with nature in balance—stable polar ice caps, moderate temperatures, and sufficient ozone. The kind of world every father and mother, every grandfather and grandmother would want for their heirs. However, that is not the kind of world they will live in if we continue down the path we are on.

Al Gore, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and author of An Inconvenient Truth, warns that the world is facing a climate crisis. “In fact, it is a true planetary emergency. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, working for more than twenty years in the most elaborate and well-organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have forged an exceptionally strong consensus that all the nations on Earth must work together to solve the crisis of global warming . . . . The voluminous evidence now strongly suggests that unless we act boldly and quickly to deal with the underlying causes of global warming, our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes, including more and stronger storms like Hurricane Katrina, in both the Atlantic and the Pacific . . . . The list of what is now endangered due to global warming also includes the continued stable configuration of ocean and wind currents that has been in place since before the first cities were built almost 10,000 years ago.”

Global warming already has triggered climate change. We have all felt or seen it, whether it was the destructive power of Hurricane Katrina, or the devastating floods throughout the planet, or the accelerated melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. Global warming is here and it will get worse without dramatic, concerted efforts to alleviate its causes. Some would say we are already going to have at least some significant disasters on this planet. NASA scientist James Hansen warns that “global warming is already starting, and there’s going to be more of it. I think there is still time to deal with global warming, but we need to act soon. Humans now control global climate, for better or worse.” Joseph Romm, founder and executive director of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, concurs.

“It’s not too late, but we must move away from fossil fuels . . . or ruin the planet for the next 50 generations.”