"Climate change threatens our health, land, food and water security"

"Climate change threatens our health, land, food and water security."
- Michael Mann, Pennsylvania State University

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to release a report on the impact global warming is having on peoples' lives and futures in March 2014. A draft of the report was leaked to the press last week and prompted an Associated Press article "Warming report sees violent, sicker, poorer future."

These issues of climate change and global warming and their impact on our livelihood were also touched on in our August 29 Author Talk with Iowa State Senator Robert Hogg. His book, America's Climate Century, calls on Americans to take the climate action we so urgently need and to make the fight against climate change our new national purpose.  As he says, it is the defining moral challenge of this century – and Americans need to lead the world in the global fight for sustainability and survival. Check out our post on the Senator Hogg talk for resources and ways to make change, and stay tuned for the forthcoming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change!

After reading the Associated Press article, what do you realize about the future of our Earth? Does it motivate you to change your lifestyle and create change around these issues? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below. 

"Throughout the 21st century, climate change impacts will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger," the report says. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low- and lower-middle income countries and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries with increasing inequality."

-  Excerpt from "Warming report sees violent, sicker, poorer future" by Seth Borenstein