Newsflashes from the Front Lines of Climate Change

Since I began working with Green Irene, I've made it my business to reach out to an inclusive audience that crosses political and environmental lines.

And I've been pretty careful to focus on the many personal and economic benefits of going green, and stay away from issues that would raise conflict.

But just this once I'm going to break that rule...mainly because I've found a growing collection of dispatches that offer powerful stories, images, and testimonies from the people and nations that are witnessing the impact of global warming on their lives, economies and cultures.

They're from places like the Base Camp of Everest, where house flies are showing up at an altitude of 17,585 feet - and the permanent ice cover, that used to melt at about 12,300 feet, is now melting as high at 18,000 feet. The photograph at right shows what is left of the powerful Khumbu Icefall that stopped the first Everest expeditions as seemingly impassable (see the Icefall in 1998)

...Places like the Carteret Islands, where a high tide literally runs over the land, washing houses away, contaminating freshwater sources, and making gardens too salty to grow anything.

...Places like the Nile Delta, home to two-thirds of Egypt's population of 83 million and the source of 60% of Egypt's food. Most of the region is just one meter above sea level, and large portions actually below sea level. While the land may not sink beneath the waves until 2100, groundwater salinity is already rising, requiring farmers to load the soil with fertilizer to get any crops at all. In the next 20 years, the population is expected to explode to 110 million, while crop yields are expected to decline by 50% by 2040.

...Places like the U.S., where tropical diseases are expected to spread well beyond the warm regions of the nation.  Dengue fever outbreaks, for example, have already been reported in Vermont, Minnesota and California, and may spread in a broad swathe up to New York and across the continent. .

I could go on...there's a large and growing number of dispatches in that collection. But whatever your political viewpoint, whichever pundits you follow, these are newsflashes from a planet in trouble.

Whether you accept the evidence of global warming or attribute it to some other cause, the fact remains that by going green - conserving energy and water, detoxing your home, reducing, reusing and recycling, and so forth - you are not only benefiting the planet, but also benefiting yourself, your health, and your budget.

If taking action offers clear benefits, while doing nothing brings increased personal, financial as well as planetary costs, why not choose enlightened self-interest, and act?