Climate Change

Seismic effects of global warming have already been set in motion.

- Margaret Quackenbush

When United States Secretary of State John Kerry addressed a delegation of foreign ministers gathered in Alaska last August for the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic, the world was in the midst of an historic refugee crisis.Thousands of Syrians were fleeing their homeland for Europe, unleashing a crisis the world has yet to fully address. For Kerry, it was a reminder of how ill-prepared we are to manage an emergency of that magnitude, and a warning that the possibility of an even larger humanitarian crisis caused by the worst effects of climate change is looming.

He called them “climate refugees:” people forced to flee from the cascading effects of global warming -— sea level rise and the flooding, erosion, landslides, desalination of farmlands, drought and famine that could ensue. And, with urgency, he assured the delegation that the seismic effects of climate change have already been set in motion:

“The bottom line is that climate is not a distant threat for our children and their children to worry about. It is now.”

Climate Change is Inevitable