A MOMENTOUS MOMENT FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

2013: A Tipping Year For Climate Change?

December 30, 2012 (National Public Radio)

“…2012 is slated to be the hottest summer on record…The worst drought in 50 years struck the South and Midwest…Deadly floods and superstorms paralyzed the northeast and other parts of the country…[and environmentalist Bill McKibben and other members of the science community say it is a result of climate change…”

[Bill McKibben, founder, 350.org:] "We've already passed all kinds of tipping points…The NASA scientist Jim Hansen was saying, ‘There's no other word for where we are now than planetary emergency.’…In this country one of the big questions will be whether we luck out and are able to see some break in this drought or whether it stretches on for another year…”

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[Bill McKibben, founder, 350.org:] "…Already the Mississippi, which just 18 months ago was in record flood, is now flirting with the lowest water ever measured…Food prices were up 40 and 45 percent around the world because the harvest failed in North America. The world is at a point [where] last year it grew less food than it consumed. We can't keep on with this kind of erratic weather and not pay huge consequence."

[Bill McKibben, founder, 350.org:] "The clear alternative and the best news from 2012 came from Germany, the one big country that's taken climate change seriously…[They are] going to blow past their targets for renewable power. This is in Germany, mind you. I mean, Munich is north of Montreal, but there were days last summer when they generated more than half the power they used from solar panels within their borders. What they're proving is it's not natural bounty nor technological know-how that holds us back; it's simply political will, one resource we're capable of ginning up if we set our minds to it."

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