Climate Change Is Now - Energy Bill Is Looking Backwards

Real audio interview - Bill McKibben: You know, we should probably no longer talk about climate change as something that's coming in the future. It clearly is here on top of us now. This summer in Europe they recorded the highest temperatures they'd ever recorded, in some cases seven, eight, nine degrees hotter than it had been before. And in the course of that summer, something like 25,000 Europeans died. These people were just exactly like us -- they had modems and refrigerators and telephones, and all the accoutrements of a modern life. Their bodies were just not prepared to cope with that kind of temperature.

Between The Lines: They didn't have air conditioning, I guess, for the most part.

Bill McKibben: Probably not, or the funds to run it enough, or whatever. We see all kinds of big changes now occurring in the natural world. Every glacial system in the world is in rapid retreat. Arctic ice is about 40 percent thinner than it was 40 years ago. This is with about one degree Fahrenheit of human-caused global warming. The temperature is about 60 degrees globally averaged now, up from 59 degrees. It doesn't sound like much, but it turns out the earth's physical systems are finely balanced, and that small changes can yield large results. And now the climatologists tell us that without dramatic changes in the way we power our lives, this century will see a further increase of, best guess -- not the worst case scenario, best middle-course guess -- about 5 degrees F. before 2100. Just to give some frame of reference, the earth hasn't been that warm, as far as anyone can tell, for 300 million to 400 million years. Temperature goes up, wind speeds increase because they follow, you know, pressure gradients -- borders between warm and cold. Sea levels rise because warm water takes up more space than cold water does. Seasons begin to shift in dramatic ways. Ice melts... on and on and on down the list.