On the recordDecember 22, 2010
Thank you, Leader. Some say we do not have to worry about the consequences that will come from what we see happening around us, that we do not have to attend to nature's warnings about the effects of what we are doing because God will get us out of the mess we are making. Perhaps, but history shows how often God's work is done through the work of human hands, through the gifts of the human mind, through the responsibility of the human conscience. In this, as in so many other things, God's work must be our own. The task for our hands is to address the facts science has long told us will bear on the problem: First and foremost, the rise in carbon pollution. We are now dumping 37 billion tons, or 37 gigatons, of CO a year into our atmosphere. Twenty years ago, that number was less than 25 gigatons. Twenty years from now it might be over 50 gigatons. We know what that means. Carbon dioxide persists in the environment for decades. We know that. So as we pile on the gigatons every year, it piles up in our atmosphere. We know that. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has fluctuated in a range between 180 and 280 parts per million over most of the last million years. In 1900, the CO<INF>2</INF> concentration had popped out of that range up to 300 parts per million, and today the concentration exceeds 390 parts per million and is climbing at about 2 parts per million every year. We know what that means too.…





