This is an excerpt from utterly amazing sermon delivered on Earth Day:

Jim Hansen, the world's foremost climate scientist, is circulating a draft paper arguing that the climate "tipping point" must be reset at 350 ppm of atmospheric carbon, a point we passed two years ago.

If we do not immediately return below that level, Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves will collapse, with a catastrophic rise in sea levels. From the study of ancient ice cores and sea sediment, we now know that sea level change is episodic and quick ... measured in feet per decade, rather than inches per century.

Neither civilization nor global ecosystems can adapt to change this rapid.

Hansen sketches a solution of appropriate scale: immediate halt to burning coal; crash Marshall program to replace it with renewables; limit oil and gas use to known, economically viable reserves; full-scale reforestation and adoption of carbon-storing agricultural practices.

Read the rest. Its more fuel to the fire (bad metaphor) that we need to completely reverse direction before its too late.