November 26, 2006   Connecting Thought Leaders with Socially Responsible Organizations and Communities   No comments

Making A Difference-The Inconvenient Truth


“Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes, a framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships.  It’s especially important to see the world as a whole as it grows more and more complex.”  Peter M. Senge, Author The Fifth Discipline


What is your response when the problems in the world seem too complex?  Do you feel overwhelmed?

                                                             ‘ target=_blank>   ‘ target=_blank>


An increase in global temperatures systemically causes other changes, including a rising sea level and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation. These changes may increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and tornados. Other consequences include higher or lower agricultural yields, glacial retreat, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.


The movies website restates these facts:

   The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years. 
   Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level. 
   The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade. 
   At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.


A very disturbing fact is the rate at which of of this is occurring exponentially.  If the warming continues, scientists say we can expect catastrophic consequences: 


    Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years — to 300,000 people a year. 
    Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. 
    Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. 
    The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050. 
    More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.
    And the most alarming threat that should resonate with us all and move us to further action today is that global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.