Highlight of the Week

New Hope For A Planet In Peril:

Change In Political Climate Opens Door For Climate Change Action

In his victory speech last night, President-Elect Barack Obama called on America to defend a “planet in peril” as one of the three great challenges of our time (see our “Quote of the Week”).

Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of National Wildlife Federation, said today:

“President-elect Obama and the incoming Congress offer new hope that Americans will come together to repower America with clean energy that revitalizes our economy and defends a planet in peril from the climate crisis.  With all the talk about red states and blue states leading up to the election, 2008 is the year that the electoral map turned green with support across the nation for clean energy. 

“This election was powered by a voting public that wants dramatic and meaningful change, especially for a new energy future.  Over the past months, 340,000 of America’s youth signed the Powervote pledge and mobilized behind a push for a clean energy economy that creates green jobs and secures our climate. 

“I am filled with hope for the days ahead, but also feel the urgency of the wasted years behind us as the clock ticks down for our planet and our economy.  NASA scientist James Hansen warned Congress this summer that the next two years will be our ‘last chance’ to boldly change course before global warming overwhelms our ability to control it. 

“The National Wildlife Federation looks forward to working with President-elect Obama and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to pass strong global warming legislation that invests boldly in clean energy, caps and cuts the pollution that causes global warming, and restores America’s natural resources.

"The action plan must be comprehensive and measure up to what scientists tell us is needed. After eight years of denial and delay, we can’t afford to wait any longer.”

Contact: Miles Grant, National Wildlife Federation, 703-864-9599 (cell), grantm@nwf.org.

Warming Planet Changing Thoreau's Woods

Author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau died in 1862, around the era when the industrial revolution was beginning to spew global warming pollution into the atmosphere.

Between 1852 and 1858, Thoreau meticulously recorded details about the flora that bloomed in the Concord, Massachusetts woods. Researchers recently repeated Thoreau’s measurements and compared the findings, revealing that global warming has had a degrading effect on the Walden Pond area.

Richard Primack and graduate student Abraham Miller-Rushing of Boston University surveyed the plants in the Concord woods from 2003 to 2007, Discovery News reports.

The researchers recorded the abundance of various species and about which day they flowered each season. They combined these results with data collected by Thoreau and another naturalist in the 19th century.

The researchers found that 27 percent of the species in Thoreau's surveys have disappeared from the area, and another 36 percent are now so rare they may be gone soon. Over the last 100 years, the average annual temperature in the Walden Pond area has risen by 4.3 degrees.

“Plants in Concord aren't really responding to climate change in the same way,” Charles Davis and colleagues at Harvard University told Discovery News. “Some are able to adjust their flowering time by upwards of three weeks, and others are not.”

“For the first time, it shows that climate change is not impacting these plants in a uniform or random way,” Davis added.