Humanity's Future

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The shift of the planet's temperature, it seems, is a red flag in relation to human existence. "It's been enough to melt 20 percent of the sea ice in the arctic," says author, journalist and environmentalist Bill McKibben. "It's been enough to speed up the spin and duration of hurricanes about 50%. It's been enough to start the permafrost beneath the tundra across the north melting."

"One of the most serious consequences of our actions is global warming brought about by raising levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels," explains Stephen Hawking, the revered Cambridge professor of Mathematics, theoretical physicist, and author. "The danger is that the temperature increase might become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. Drought and deforestation are reducing the amount of carbon dioxide recycled into the atmosphere and the warming of the seas may trigger the release of large quantities of CO2 trapped on the ocean floor. In addition, the melting of the Artic and Antarctic ice sheets will reduce the amount of solar energy reflected back into space and so increase the temperature further. We don't know where the global warming will stop, but the worst case scenario is that earth would become like its sister planet, Venus, with a temperature of 250 centigrade, and raining sulfuric acid. The human race could not survive in those conditions."

The earth, once covered in mostly green and blue, has also seen a decline in its life-giving rainforests as a direct result of industrial development. "Seventy countries in the world no longer have any intact or original forests," comments Tzeporah Berman, Program Director for ForestEthics. "And here in the United States, ninety five percent of our old growth forests are already gone. Forest loss is also effecting climate change because forests are the greatest terrestrial storehouse of carbon. So, logging in Canada alone puts as much carbon into the atmosphere as all of the cars in California every year."

Wangari Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, adds: "In my own part of the part of the world, I keep telling people, 'Let us not cut trees irresponsibly. Let us not destroy especially the forested mountains. Because if you destroy the forests on these mountains, the rivers will stop flowing and the rains will become irregular and the crops will fail and you will die of hunger and starvation. Now the problem is, people don’t make those linkages."

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