Many of us have been slogging away on global warming for decades, for me it’s been fifteen years.  For a number of years it seemed like we’d never get there.  It seemed too hard to convince people that global warming was something we should address even though the scientists didn’t expect to start seeing real impacts for 75 to 100 years.  Fifteen years later the latest reports from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  show us impacts here and now, not just in Bangladesh at some distant point in the future.  Predicted impacts coming including the further melting of the polar ice caps, drought, water shortages, super storms, flooded coastal cities, the spread of infectious diseases…. 

The public believes we have to deal with it, politicians are starting to listen and with ExxonMobil isolated as the last holdout of taking real action, even industry leaders says it’s time to reduce greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.   But it’s not for businesses to say, as many of them have fought taking this threat seriously for a generation.  Let’s listen to the people, especially the thousands who participated in more than 1,400 demonstrations in 50 states on April 14 all calling on Congress to reduce global warming emissions by 80% by 2050.

Emissions reductions on that scale are what it is going to take according to the scientists.  No room for compromise on this, incrementalism is for tax fights and trade disputes.  On global warming we must do what the best scientific concensus says we must do and that is the 80% reductions by 2050.  Fortunately we’ve got new political leadership in Washington that LISTENS to the public, which makes it our duty as American citizens to drive this solution through Congress.  Only then will a truly green era be born as The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman dreams about in a recent Times Magazine piece.

So reflect on this progress this Earth Day, the global warming beast is certainly awakening but we’ve got more movement to tame it than I’ve ever seen and that should inspire us this Earth Day.