A Real Look at Global Warming

I discovered YES Magazine today, check it out at Whole Foods! Lots of commercial free information on building a "just and sustainable world" in their words. Bill McKibben writes a brutally frank assessment the crucial moment we are in terms of the physical well being and survival of our planet's life systems.

whole article here:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2271

from the article:
Quite literally it’s the biggest problem humans have ever faced, and while there are ways to at least start to deal with it, all of them rest on acknowledging just how large the challenge really is.
What exactly do I mean by large? Last fall the scientists who study sea ice in the Arctic reported that it was melting even faster than they’d predicted. We blew by the old record for ice loss in mid-August, and by the time the long polar night finally descended, the fabled Northwest Passage was open for navigation for the first time in recorded history. That is to say, from outer space the Earth already looks very different: less white, more blue.
What do I mean by large? On the glaciers of Greenland, 10 percent more ice melted last summer than any year for which we have records. This is bad news because, unlike sea ice, Greenland’s vast frozen mass sits above rock, and when it melts, the oceans rise—potentially a lot. James Hansen, America’s foremost climatologist, testified in court last year that we might see sea level increase as much as six meters—nearly 20 feet—in the course of this century. With that, the view from space looks very different indeed (not to mention the view from the office buildings of any coastal city on earth).
What do I mean by large? Already higher heat is causing drought in arid areas the world over. In Australia things have gotten so bad that agricultural output is falling fast in the continent’s biggest river basin, and the nation’s prime minister is urging his people to pray for rain. Aussie native Rupert Murdoch is so rattled he’s announced plans to make his NewsCorp empire (think Fox News) carbon neutral. Australian voters ousted their old government last fall, largely because of concerns over climate.
What do I mean by large? If we’d tried we couldn’t have figured out a more thorough way to make life miserable for the world’s poor, who now must deal with the loss of the one thing they could always take for granted—the planet’s basic physical stability. We’ve never figured out as efficient a method for obliterating other species. We’ve never figured out another way to so fully degrade the future for everyone who comes after us.
We need a movement. We need a political swell larger than the civil rights movement—as passionate and as willing to sacrifice. Without it, we’re not going to best the fossil fuel companies and the automakers and the rest of the vested interests that are keeping us from change.