Last weekend, thousands of volunteers from surrounding states braved freezing temperatures to help people of North Dakota and Minnesota stuff sand bags for levee enhancements in a mostly successful attempt to contain the historic rise of the Red River. Twisters ripped through Mississippi, injuring scores of people, while a blizzard blasted Colorado and the Gulf coast endured yet another beating from severe storms.
Simultaneously, alarm bells rang in the Arctic. Katey Walter, an ecologist at the University of Alaska said in New Science. "The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them."
Methane is about 20 times more powerful than the original catalyst for global warming, carbon dioxide. We have entered the dreaded period where secondary effects of global warming could take the climate challenge completely out of our control.
As the world prepares to meet at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to set standards for cutting greenhouse gases, President Barack Obama's historic opportunity to set policy to reverse climate change is fleeting. The United States may be unfashionably late to the meeting unless we have our own, meaningful climate policy in place before December.
In the economic stimulus package, President Obama dedicated billions for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Obama promises 5 million new, green jobs that cannot be outsourced, boosting our economy. We recently got word that mountain-top removal coal mining has been put on hold, at least temporarily.
These colossal changes would have been unimaginable even a few months ago. So what's the problem?
1. Carbon Cap and Trade: Cap Yes, Trade No (see comments in article)
2. Fossil Fuel vs. Renewable Energy Economy (see comments in article)(View remainder of article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/03-6
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