THE POWER OF CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT TO BE UNDERESTIMATED

For hundreds of millions of years the only place that life existed in any great abundance and diversity was in the sea. Among its many diverse forms was this octopus related creature called Endoceras. About 440 million years ago earth experienced a major ice age that lasted a whopping half million years wiping out about 85 percent of all sea life existing at that time including Endoceras. I saw this replica of Endoceras on display in the University of Michigan Natural History Museum in Ann Arbor.

Today we face a new kind of planetary crisis, global warming, caused by us humans producing an overabundance of carbon dioxide beginning at the start of the industrial age and continuing up until the present. While we humans are beginning to feel the impacts in the form of sea level rise, loss of sea ice to protect coastal areas in the north, increased number and severity of storms, etc., the biggest impacts are yet to come including the massive loss of species. In 2016 195 countries signed an agreement known as the Paris accord to aggressively tackle the issue. Newly elected US President Donald Trump has filed to remove the US as a party to that agreement. For all of the last century and most of this century the US has been the number one producer of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the biggest contributor to the problem.
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