Green Options

One of the biggest issues facing us right now is global warming. Its effects on animals and on agriculture are indeed frightening, and the effects on the human population are even scarier. The facts about global warming are often debated, but unfortunately, even if we disagree about the causes, global warming effects are real, global, and measurable. The causes are mainly from us, the human race, and the effects on us will be severe.

The government of Indonesia is preparing to do mass relocation’s of people living on islands considered vulnerable to rising sea levels over the next three decades.

It’s hard for me to be shocked anymore by a news report, feature article or scientific study on climate change. I get it already: it’s upon us and accelerating faster than even the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says. But Belfast Telegraph reporter Johann Hari’s recent account of global warming in Bangladesh hit me like nothing else I’ve read in the recent past.

The sheer enormity of the tragedy already unfolding for so many people (Bangladesh has a population of more than 150 million) is mind-boggling. Hari describes whole villages losing their agricultural livelihoods, their health and — sometimes — their childrens’ lives as rising sea levels cause saltwater to seep underground below once-fertile rice paddies. He visits island communities whose older residents now point to treetops jutting out from the sea when asked where their homes once stood. And, chillingly, he meets with a new and growing generation of jihadists — unusual until recently in Bangladesh — who are seeking out scapegoats as their futures visibly wither away.

Years of legal wrangling have finally produced a long-awaited report on the current and potential effects of climate change on the U.S. And it should come as no surprise that regions already hurting — Alaska and the arid Southwest — are among the areas expected to feel the greatest pain from continued climate change in the future.

The report, Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States, was released today by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. According to the Government Accountability Project, the study was “years overdue under a requirement of law” and was prepared only after a federal court order last year set a release deadline of May 31, 2008.

Among the report’s highlights (or lowlights, depending on your perspective):

If you see a woman marking a long, blue line down a New York City street, sidewalk or park with a wheeled chalk-line marker, please stop her to ask her what she’s doing and why. One of Eve Mosher’s goals in her High Water Line art project is to engage people along the way and let them lead the discussion once they find out the purpose of her work: to draw public attention to

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