Global Warming and Climate Change...our Green Earth is Waning

North America will look like this in decades ahead.

We are at the edge, as I have mentioned in my Facebook articles. And we are at fault for it...caused mostly by our greed, and made worse by our inability to assume responsibility for our actions.

The United States, contrary to Congress, is the primary cause of Global warming...with our excessive use of resources, upwards of 25% of the world's resources are employed in our lifestyle...and we are the largest carbon emitter of all nations.

First place in this dangerous category...what an honor.

Due to our uncontrolled growth in human population, and our out of control use of our natural resources, we have doomed our planet to ruin, and we have started---as effectively presented in the Sixth Extinction, an impressive research based volume by Elizabeth Kolbert, we have entered the next planetary extinction, one that we have caused and one that we will have to suffer over the next few centuries.

Though only a minority of world leaders are listening, Kolbert isn't the only one raising the alarm. Others have been telling us for more than half a century. In her world awakening "Silent Spring', Rachel Carson pointed to the toxins we were indiscriminately spreading over croplands and forests, without control and without concern...which began the destruction of many species, and which may have taken Carson herself, as she died of cancer before her book raised her warning. Rachel died, but the American EPA was formed from her work.

Today Congress, backed by industrial forces like the petrochemical giants (Koch, Dow, and DuPont among them), is working to take the enlightened power away from EPA to reduce the Clean Air and Water regulations that have made our best dent into our non-sustainable practises.

It is in our hands...and there are active forces afoot. The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), The Earth Institute (Columbia University), and the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation are leaders among them. And though some of their challenges call for the elimination of the use of fossil fuels within the next 30 years (RMI), and the dedication of half of our planet under the Half-Earth Project in a call to conserve half the Earth for the rest of life (E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation), when closely reviewed we find they are both achievable and truly sustainable, with both economic and environmental protection engaged to ensure that they succeed.

Now it is time for us to use that backbone that evolution gave us, and stand against the greed that has lead us into extremis.