This latest dispatch from Lester Brown is adapted from Chapter 3, "Rising Temperatures and Rising Seas," of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization  (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, available for free downloading and purchase at www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/index.htm).

When regulating emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), nations around the world claim to use the GHG concentration stabilization target of 450 parts per million carbon dioxide equivalent (ppm CO2-eq) as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, as their guildline for setting domestic emission reduction targets.

IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report asserted that Annex I (developped) countries need to reduce GHG emissions 25- 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050, in order to stabilize below 450 ppm CO2-eq concentration, after a temporary overshoot by 50 ppm. Such a stabilization pathway was said to provide a "reasonable chance" of averting warming beyond 2˚C above pre-industrial temperature that would lead to catastrophic consequences on human and ecological systems. Most countries that bothered with a climate legislation dropped the tougher end of the ranges, and touted targets such as 20% below 1990 level by 2020, and 80% below 1990 level by 2050, as aggressive climate policies that supposedly heeds the warnings of IPCC. The current US legislation under consideration, the Waxman-Markey bill, is even worse. (See my post on that bill)

Paul Krugman wrote an excellent OP-ED "An Affordable Salvation" on New York Times, April 30, 2009. I wrote a letter-to-editor to comment on it (see bottom).

First, here are the highlights of what he wrote:

"It’s important to understand that just as denials that climate change is happening are junk science, predictions of economic disaster if we try to do anything about climate change are junk economics."

Here is a great dark humor about Earth Day, by ClimateProgress blogger Joe Romm:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/19/renameearth-day-humor-triage-i-tol...

My comments to him is below:

On the same day that we learned about a protective ice bridge in West Antarctica breaking off from an ice shelf the size of Jamaica, leaving the shelf in peril, scientists also reported more bad news to our north in the Arctic Sea. There, the thickness of sea ice this winter reached "a record wintertime low of just 378,000 square miles this year, down 43 percent from last year," according to Walt Meier, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

These two events, indicating problematic warming in both our northern and southern ice cover, will both have the ultimate effect of accelerating warming as sea ice melts into the ocean and the surface of the planet gets darker and less reflective.

[The following is an open letter from Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, calling for participation in the March 2nd Capitol Climate Action, including civil disobedience at a coal plant just outside of DC that is literally powering Congress with dirty energy. Please check out our local solidarity rallies on March 1st].

There are moments in a nation's -- and a planet's -- history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

Save the Economy AND the Planet!

Our oil-addicted economy is beginning to unravel under the pressure of increasing oil prices and depletion of petroleum reserves. American blood and dollars are being squandered in endless wars to protect oil supplies. Climate change is already causing major disasters, and appears to be leading to an environmental catastrophe that will wreck the economy and destabilize human civilization. We can’t continue down this road much longer. If we do, our resources will be exhausted simply reacting to mounting problems, and we will be caught in an irreversible downward spiral. We need take a different path - a path away from oil addiction and toward a Secure Green Future.