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This December 1972 file photo released by NASA shows a view of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew while traveling toward the Moon. The photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea and Africa, top, to the Antarctic polar ice cap.

((AP Photo/NASA))

By Tony Giordano

In the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate scientists state that growing evidence has caused them to raise the certainty of man-made climate change to 95 percent. Though some people cling stubbornly to any sliver of uncertainty about climate change, 95 percent certainty is quite high for a cautious, conservative institution like science.

Politicians and the general public finally are starting to face the stark reality and the urgent need to take action to mitigate the dangers of climate change. While welcoming this development, I can’t help but be uneasy about what’s come to be a narrow focus on climate change and a widespread failure to see the bigger picture of man’s place in the natural world and the many ways we are degrading its vital but delicate life support systems. Like all forms of life, we depend entirely on these natural systems for our water, food and air, among other needs.

What I worry about is this: If the U.S. and other leading nations somehow manage to do the right thing and take decisive steps to significantly mitigate climate change, many people will likely believe that environmental problems are solved and everything is all right.

Not so.

In the report, “Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century-Information for Policy Makers,” a group of 520 scientists worldwide has identified five major, interconnected threats that civilization poses to the Earth’s life support systems, climate change being but one of them. Excerpting from the report’s summary, these global threats are:

• Climate disruption — more, faster climate change than since humans first became a species;

• Extinction — not since the dinosaurs went extinct have so many species and populations died out so fast;

• Loss of diverse ecosystems — we have plowed, paved or otherwise transformed more than 40 percent of Earth's ice-free land;

• Pollution — environmental contaminants in the air, water and land are at record levels and increasing, seriously harming people and wildlife in unforeseen ways.

Population growth and growing material consumption patterns — 7 billion people alive today will likely grow to 9.5 billion by 2050 — will increase pressures on the natural world.

Even at first glance, one can see a common thread in these threats. They tend to feed each other and, moreover, they relate to the fundamental way in which man views and uses nature. The theme running through all these issues is that we need to restore balance in the natural world of which we are part, and preserve the systems that support life. People, governments and corporations need to begin recognizing that we are intimately connected to the natural world, which is both within us and all around us; we depend on it for sustenance and life itself.

These warnings aren’t alarmist academic musings. The warnings are based on reams of data gathered over many years and analyzed by many of the world’s leading scientists, who describe the evidence for these warnings as “overwhelming” and they say the science is #8220;unequivocal.” Accordingly, they call for immediate remedial action by governments around the world.

Some remedial actions would address several of these threats at once. For example, moving to clean, renewable energy would mitigate both climate change and pollution. For this reason, many scientists have endorsed proposals for a carbon fee to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that pollute the air and water and cause climate change. This is one thing our government can and should do — now. Governments in a number of other countries are ahead of us on this.

Rather than despair over these foreboding threats, people can take a number of positive steps. History tells us that our government acts when masses of people demand action. In addition to reducing our personal footprint, the best thing we can do is demand immediate action from our elected representatives to address these dangers to all life on Earth.

Tony Giordano is an adjunct instructor at Brookdale Community College, a research consultant in social science and a volunteer member of Citizens' Climate Lobby.

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