Climate change is the defining environmental issue of our time
and our children’s time. Into one crowded elevator go
conservation of nature, human health, the prospects for
agriculture, international stability, national security, and of
course energy policy and technology. Climate change reflects our
intensifying presence on the surface of this planet. It wraps
together everything from human population growth to our
economy’s inability to value the future, to humanity’s inability
to agree to solve problems that can more easily be kicked down
the road. Climate change is really many problems—including ocean
warming and the acidification of the ocean—caused by too much
carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Carbon is the key.
From atmosphere to ocean, the carbon burden is the problem.
There’s a third more carbon dioxide in the air than there was
200 years ago when the Industrial Revolution began, and more is
constantly accumulating. Most of the “new” carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere and oceans was locked into