Gelbspan, Ross
In January 1995 a vast section of ice the size of Rhode Island broke off the Larsen ice shelf in Antarctica. Although it received scant coverage in the press, it was one of the most spectacular and nightmarish manifestations yet of the ominous changes occurring on the planet. The Heat Is On, 1997
Ross Gelbspan has been an editor and reporter for the Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He was present at the first U.N. Conference on the Environment in Stockholm in a972, and was the coauthor of a series of articles on the second such conference in 1992. His work has also appeared in Harper's and numerous other periodicals.
Since 1980 we have seen the ten hottest years in recorded history. Ibid.
Measurements of the Antarctic peninsula show that its average temperature has risen by nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the last twenty years. Ibid.
While the experts supposedly debate whether global warming has been "proved," the recent weather record has been marked by more intense rainfalls and severe snowstorms, stronger hurricanes, unseasonable and prolonged droughts, resulting in crop failures and devastating forest fires from Texas to Mongolia, killer heat waves from Yemen to Nepal. Ibid.
The reason most Americans don't know what is happening to the climate is that the oil and coal industries have spent millions of dollars to persuade them that the global warming isn't happening. Ibid.
Denying global warming is a clever strategy - but its short-sightedness carries the seeds of massive destruction. Ibid.
The process of desertification has already been under way for nearly thirty years in parts of Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy according to a 1996 report by more than forty European climate scientists working under the auspices of the European Commission. Ibid.
. . . a far more insidious threat is the spread of infectious diseases, most notably malaria, dengue, yellow fever, cholera, hantavirus, and encephalitis. Ibid.
The ocean off the coast of California is becoming a wasteland. Plants are migrating up mountains to keep pace with the warming climate. Ibid.
The final change we need to make lies at the level of morality, both personal and collective. This is where the purposes of our existence are defined - the level of our most basic self-identity. Ibid.
We are holding in our hands not only the health of our endangered planet but our own future as a civilized species. Ibid.
We are no longer dependent children of the earth. Ibid.