Global Warming - The Day The Question Mark Vanished

That’s how the scientists in Paris today are presenting their results. It’s time to stop debating whether or not humans are affecting the global climate system, and start working together to minimize the damage — to ecosystems and to ourselves and to the humans of the future.

You can listen to the Paris press conference, or download the 21-page executive summary, at this IPCC site. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level,” says the report.

The good news is, all of us can start right now to take action to cut our emissions, and we can do it while still maintaining our quality of life. We can just stop wasting energy on stuff we don’t need, for starters. And we can be way more efficient with the energy that we use. We can make our lives a little simpler and in the process, actually *improve* our quality of life.

But I hope we won’t think we have to stop travelling. Travel is just too valuable an experience to give up. But we can travel better… if a train is an option, that would be a good choice over a short-haul flight. For short trips, we can seek out mass transit. But for going overseas, or across a continent, airliners actually get pretty good mileage, and are getting more efficient all the time. As for those private jets though, well, that is going to be pretty hard to justify, even if you buy “carbon credits” to ease the guilt… but I doubt that many BootsnAll travelers are interested in that anyway.