NYT : PARIS, Feb. 2 --The world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas from the atmospheric buildup of gases that trap heat, but the warming can be substantially blunted by prompt action, an international network of climate experts said today.
Prompt. Action. What are you doing to halt the "global disaster"? Students at 490 campuses around North America have an answer. Today is the last day of the Campus Climate Challenge's Week of Action, which saw nearly 600 separate yet coordinated events across the continent. Students screened An Inconvenient Truth, lobbied lawmakers and big business, and promoted conservation on their own campuses--part of the Climate Challenge's mission is to turn campuses into test sites for conservation and energy alternatives.
Those of us who expect to be alive in 2050 bring a unique responsibility and moral urgency to global warming. I often write about the financial debts that young people owe in part because of decisions made by their elders. The members of Energy Action, the largest-ever student environmental coalition, are addressing the ecological debts--the fat black oil check we didn't completely write, but that's being cashed on us.