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STOP GLOBAL WARMING - NOW
It is time that we lower our impact on the world. We need to do long-term planning and be willing to reconsider how we live. If we do not succeed at living within our means , "the world as a whole within the next few decades will face a declining standard of living or perhaps something worse" (from Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed".) Earth is a beautiful place filled with good people; therefore we need a better future for them.
Global warming and how our society choose to fail or succeed is an issue that is pressing on our us now. One of the most current book on this subject is "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond. “The lesson of “Collapse” is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death.” ““Collapse” is a book about the most prosaic elements of the earth’s ecosystem—soil, trees, and water—because societies fail, in Diamond’s view, when they mismanage those environmental factors.” “--we can be law-abiding and peace-loving and tolerant and inventive and committed to freedom and true to our own values and still behave in ways that are biologically suicidal.” - Malcolm Gladwell, book review in the New Yorker. I highly recommend reading this book.
For more information on stopping global warming and what you can do, go to www.stopglobalwarming.org. To better understand the global impact of this warming trend go www.architecture2030.org/global_impact/index.html. Yes, one person can make a difference by taking the following steps, go towww.wilshirecenter.com/future/FutureLink.html, and by encouraging family members, friends, neighbors and fellow workers to take similar steps. Some more thoughts -"The Next Green Revolution".
Help stop increasing global warming and the need for the war in Iraq - buy a flex fuel vehicle that can use ethanol. A message from your President: " Ethanol is good for the environment""and it means we're less dependent on foreign sources of oil”. For information on the use of ethanol in automobiles log on to E85.
"Global warming, caused by a man-made blanket of greenhouse gasses (mainly carbon dioxide) that surrounds the earth and traps in heat, is well underway and if allowed to intensify over the coming years will seriously threaten our planet.
Unknowingly, we are chiefly responsible for these gasses and we have a unique and historic opportunity to reverse that for which we are responsible The scientific consensus is that we must limit the rise in global temperature to less than 2° C above pre-industrial levels to avoid disastrous impacts. At 2° C, it is likely millions of people will be displaced from their homes. Impacts do not end there. Food production will decline, rivers will become too warm for trout and salmon, snow pack will decrease threatening urban water supplies, weather will become more extreme, sea level will rise inundating coastal areas, the world’s coral reefs - home to 25% of all marine species - will be destroyed, a quarter of all plant and animal species on earth will become extinct and the Greenland ice sheet will begin to melt. ( "Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday." By Shankar Vedantam,
Washington Post Staff Writer,
Friday, February 17, 2006)
At 3° C the impacts are projected to be catastrophic. We can only imagine what the socio-economic and political consequences will be given this scenario. If we continue on our present course of burning fossil fuels, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that we could reach 2° C by 2050 and 3° C by 2070. We are running out of time." Edward Mazria AIA.
Another good informative video on global warming: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/features/?leo
See the new film: "An Inconvenient Truth"
For more information read the "Time" Special Report Global Warming, April 3, 2006 issue.
If we could significantly reduce our defense budgets, we would have more than enough money to solve global warming, erase poverty, hunger, many diseases, and ignorance. By solving these problems we create many new jobs. People would not be desperate, undernourished, without hope, and would not need to kill each other. Government’s role than would be to help people solve problems and improve life for all. People would become more skillful, understanding and caring/compassionate.
It is critical that we acts now for our own well-being and for the well-being of our world. Join 205 mayors in the U.S. to reduce global warming pollution by striving to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their communities.
Recent scientific predictions are that the world has just 10 years to reverse global warming or a tipping point will be reached beyond which it cannot be stopped. Scientists warn of ecological catastrophe across Asia as glaciers melt and continent's great rivers dry up.
This is a work in progress by Gary Russell, AIA to be added to over time. If you have comments please email me at glra@pacbell.net. |
