The Future Needs Our Help
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Although the United States makes up only about 5 percent of the world's population, we create approximately 25 percent of the pollution that causes global warming.
- There are currently over 100 new dirty coal-fired power plants proposed for construction throughout the United States.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that during our children's lifetimes, global warming will raise the average temperatures by 2.7° to 10.5° F, resulting in rising sea levels, coastal erosion, decreasing agricultural productivity, and accelerated extinction rates of plants and animals
- If America's autos were a separate country, they would be the world's fifth largest global warming polluter.
- Scientists project that as warmer temperatures spread north and south from the tropics and to higher elevations, malaria-carrying mosquitoes will spread with them, putting as much as 65 percent of the world's population at risk of infection by malaria.
- Even though the US has the potential to get most of our energy from clean sources, 90% still comes from polluting energy sources like coal and nuclear power, while only 2% comes from clean and renewable energy.
- Experts are now saying that an 80% reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by the year 2050 is necessary if we are to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
- The US still has not ratified the Kyoto protocol, developed in 1997 to create global emissions reduction goals.
- A sea level rise of three feet will cause daily tidal flooding of 230 square miles of Bay Area land and 330 square miles of Sacramento Delta land. This equals 560 square miles, which is over 11 times the size of the city of San Francisco.
- More than one-tenth of the world's population,or 643 million people, live in low-lying areas at risk from climate change: in descending order China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the U.S., Thailand and the Philippines
- Super powerful hurricanes, fueled by warmer ocean temperatures are the “smoking gun” of global warming. Since 1970, the number of category 4 and 5 events has jumped sharply.
- An average car in the United States driven 10,000 miles in one year releases 5.5 tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
- All ten of the hottest years on record, globally, have occurred in the last fifteen years.
