Burt Froom sent me this article that he wrote for Peace Meal, the newsletter of the Peacemaking Committee of the Presbytery of Philadelphia. The article first reviews the threat of global warming and then looks at the environmental accomplishments of 2009. Thanks for a thorough article, Burt!
Obama’s Warmer, Cleaner Year
By Burt Froom, Stewardship of Creation Educator for the Presbytery of Philadelphia
The new administration of President Barack Obama has now had a year to establish the policies of his presidential campaign that made combating global warming a top priority. Much has happened in Washington this year. But before we look at President Obama’s accomplishments, let us review the gathering threat of global warming.
Global Warming Rescue
James Gustaf Speth, environmentalist, lawyer, and educator at Yale, says that “all we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly what we are doing today.…Just continue to release greenhouse gases at current rates…and the world in the later part of this century will not be fit to live in.” What does this ruined world look like?
The human population explosion puts great pressure on Earth’s resources. Estimated world population now stands at nearly 6.8 billion of us human beings. (At the time of Christ, there were 200 million people. By 1804, there were one billion, and by 1927 there were two billion. England in 1500 had 2.6 million people. India had 125 million in 1750 but today has 1.19 billion. The U.S. population is 308 million, 4.5 percent of the world’s population. But we Americans consume more than 25 percent of Earth’s resources, all by ourselves. Around 27 percent of the world’s people are below age 15, and half of Earth’s people live in poverty.) It is projected that there will be 9 billion people on earth in 2040. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population)