Global Warming

I used to think that top environmental problems are biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that. - Gus Spoth

All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster. - Barack Obama

As best as can be determined, the world is now warmer than it has been at any point in the last two millennia, and, if current trends continue, by the end of the century it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last two million years. - Elizabeth Kolbert

Avoiding a planet-changing global warming catastrophe is why we urgently need to transform the global energy system to a carbon-neutral one. The clock is ticking. - Martin Hoffert

For innovators who find safe and workable solutions to global warming, the rewards will be staggering. - Fred Krupp

Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it. - Tony Blair

Global warming must be seen as an economic and security threat. - Kofi Annan

Global warming sounds so big that it's hard to imagine that you as an individual can do anything about it ("what I do is such a tiny drop in the bucket it doesn't matter anyway"). But that's where you're wrong: the reason Earth is in peril is because of individual actions – by me, by you, by the person sitting next to you, by the person you bump into on the street. The bad news is that when we put all those individual actions together, it becomes on huge number – big enough to change climate, big enough to change how Earth supports life. The good news – the very good news – is that, just as the problem is the sum of what each one of us is doing, so is fixing the problem. - Anthony D. Barnosky

I don't mean to imply that we are in imminent danger of being wiped off the face of the earth – at least, not on account of global warming. But climate change does confront us with profound new realities. We face these new realities as a nation, as members of the world community, as consumers, as producers, and as investors. And unless we do a better job of adjusting to these new realities, we will pay a heavy price. We may not suffer the fate of the dinosaurs. But there will be a toll on our environment and on our economy, and the toll will rise higher with each new generation. - Eileen Claussen

It is true that there are still some who deny that global warming is taking place, or that it constitutes a serious problem. Others, while recognizing that global warming is occurring, do not accept that it results from human activities and hence effectively deny that action can be taken to combat it. The great majority of atmospheric scientists, however, now accept that man-made emissions – chiefly, but not only, of carbon dioxide – are aggravating the so-called 'greenhouse effect', thereby causing the world to warm up to what amounts to a dangerous extent. - Barry Holden

No single technology will stop global warming, but there is a silver bullet: a cap on carbon that will launch all these solutions into the mainstream. - Fred Krupp