The Climate Red Zone: 350 or Bust

The Center for Biological Diversity’s new 20th anniversary booklet features a sobering warning about global warming, the center’s new focus in its efforts to protect endangered species (including, it seems, humanity itself):

We had intended to look forward to the Center’s next 20 years. But the world’s leading scientists are warning that if we don’t get a handle on greenhouse gas emissions in six years, the planet will be committed to catastrophic, runaway global warming. The threat of climate change must be solved now, by us. The problem can‘t be passed on to our children. If emissions aren’t checked by the time today’s youth are old enough to make policy, it will be too late for policy.

So instead of 20 years, consider 350 parts per million: We must reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to fewer than 350 parts per million as swiftly as possible to prevent runaway global warming. This is the task of our generation. 

A third of the Earth’s species will be committed to extinction by 2050 if we don’t take action to get down to 350 now — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In all of human history — going back more than 200,000 years — the highest CO2 concentration reached before modern times was 308 ppm. The Earth’s atmosphere now has an average concentration of 385. In the geological link of an eye, we’ve dumped more CO2 into the atmosphere than built up naturally in the past 800,000 years. 

This is our era’s challenge in a nutshell. All other environmental considerations — extinctions, dying oceans, polar ice melt, sea level rises, renewable energy, deforestation, air and water pollution — are tied to and flow from the “350 or bust” climate red zone we now find ourselves in. How close are we to disaster? Take a look at the new issue of Nature, the world’s preeminent science journal, for the latest and none-too-comforting word on that question. (I’ll be offering a more in-depth review of the Nature articles in an upcoming post.)

The Center for Biological Diversity is concerned with much more than climate, and the rest of the 20th anniversary booklet is well-worth reading, including the map reproduced below showing milestones in the protection of endangered species and habitats.

Explore posts in the same categories: Endangered Species, Global Warming

Tags: Center for Biological Diversity, Endangered Species Act, Global Warming

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