ENVIRONMENT 'Final Warning To Humanity'

"[T]he world's scientists have spoken, clearly and in one voice," said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on the most recent report of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). After a rigorous multi-stage review process that includes 2,500 scientific expert reviewers, 800 contributing authors, and 450 lead authors representing 130 countries, the IPCC warns that "all countries" will be affected by climate change if carbon emissions continue to spiral.

By 2100, global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees celsius, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could lead to an eventual rise in sea levels of up to 1.40 meters.

With "strikingly" blunt language, the report reads like "a final warning to humanity," notes Time magazine. "What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment," declared IPCC chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.

DEBATING WAYS TO BATTLE WARMING: This weekend, Grist and Living on Earth sponsored a presidential candidate forum to discuss ways to tackle climate change, in partnership with the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, California LCVEF, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, and the Presidential Forum on Renewable Energy.

The event was attended by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), former senator John Edwards, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). "[R]educing oil dependence and global warming is the second most important issue among independent voters," states Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress.

With "little disagreement among them" on the urgency of climate change, Clinton and Edwards emphasized the need to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2050, consistent with the goals of the IPCC, along with a mandatory cap on greenhouse emissions. Such plans to combat global warming can be undertaken with a very modest reduction in global annual GDP growth of 0.12 percent, notes Pachauri.