EPA's take on global warming

The United States fund and operate one of the finest environmental protection agency on Earth, the EPA.

Although most of the information provided on their web site appears to be right on the money regarding the many alarming global warming signs, there appears to be some kind of virtual brick wall between their common sense, which is mostly empirical knowledge, and Washington's political leaders.

For instance, this excerpt hits the nail right on the head:

"For over the past 200 years, the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, and deforestation have caused the concentrations of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" to increase significantly in our atmosphere.

These gases prevent heat from escaping to space, somewhat like the glass panels of a greenhouse."

Now, that's the whole "greenhouse gases 101" course boiled down to human-readable format. Any monkey with half a brain would probably get with the program to change our polluting ways, thus avoiding a seemingly inevitable and tragic fate but no, political leaders aren't that smart... or willing to listen.

You see, the more "stuff" gets produced, whatever the greenhouse gases cost for the environment are, the more money get shuffled around and those on the receiving end of this financial dance find no comfort in saving a tree if they lose that new luxury car in their driveway. As such, the only real chance for a change comes from "we" the people or, should I say, the poor people -- the ones that won't have enough dough to buy their ticket to embark on the rocket ship pointed towards "Earth 2.0" when this one comes to a boiling or freezing end.

The world population has more than doubled over the course of the last 50 years so we better get our act straight before other nations, namely China and India, looking to emulate our relatively lavish lifestyle, spoil the planet by legitimately trying to get their share of the fun.

The EPA has voiced many wise words, will any politician care to listen?

How climates changes will affect fauna and flora

Scientists from the world over have be quite vocal in pointing to climate changes as future causes for droughts, floods and other (equally destructive) natural disasters.

Natural catastrophies affect humans, sometimes in very disturbing ways but who's looking out for the animals and the plants many of them rely on to survive? Not enough people, if you ask biologist Kaustuv Roy from UCSD, interviewed on May 1st 2007 by Science Today, who says climate change can also affect the ecology:

"Plants and animals shift around on the landscape so you may have built a nature reserve today and you know exactly what you're trying to preserve because they live there but if the climate changes substantially, some of those plants and animals may move somewhere else."

Kaustuv Roy goes on to explain that climate change is relatively and that it could turn out to be one of the most aggravating problems facing our Blue Planet:

"It really doesn't matter which side of the conservation debate you're in. We all need to figure out what the consequences of the climate warming are. If you can't figure out the consequences, you can't even have a good conservation plan or you can't have a good management plan. And, given the trajectory of climate over the next few centuries, the magnitude of that problem is so big that we better pay attention to it."

It all goes back to the food chain. Animals and plants eventually make their way, up that chain, to us humans. By protecting our fauna and flora, we greatly enhance our own chances for survival, on Earth.