Earth Day 1970 proved to American politicians that the environment was a populist issue, that people cared about their planet, and that elected officials were going to be held accountable for what they did about protecting the Earth's future.

Today, we face an environmental crisis of far greater, planetary proportions.

Climate Chaos is already changing our world. Within the lifetimes of children being born today, it  may challenge our survival as a species. Yet the response by governments and industry to date has been very late, and very little.

 "We know so much more about the science of global warming now than we knew about the science of leaded gasoline and auto emissions in 1970 when we wrote the Clean Air Act," Leon Billings told Christine Larson in Grist.  Billings was staff director for Senator Ed Muskie, one of the principle architects of a number of landmark environmental laws in the US.

So what's different today? Why is industry able to strong-arm government into putting the brakes on  a response? Why is Exxon able to demand more research and more certainty before the world takes action? Why does the US government's willingness to take action seem to be shrinking, while the threat is growing? And why is US inaction slowing down the rest of the world?

Part of it has to do with all of us. Governments need to know that it isn't just a few treehuggers who are worried about a 7 meter sea-level rise, mass extinctions, increasing occurrences of Katrina-like storms and hundreds of millions of homeless refugees. Earth Day in 1970 brought truck drivers and house painters out into the streets. It wasn't just ecologists, and it wasn't just lefties. It was anyone with a stake in the future.

Have a look at this clip from the upcoming film, "An Inconvenient Truth." In terms of the magnitude of what we're facing, this says it all:


And if that's not scary enough for you, perhaps you'd like to see what your home or your favourite coastal town might look like in a few decades if we don't act now.

If the Greenland ice sheet collapses, predictions call for a sea level rise of up to 7 meters. If the Antarctic goes, some models project 12 meters of rise. Have a look at these Google Maps, based on NASA elevation data, of what a sea-level rise of 7 meters could look like. Click on the links to look at the impacts of  various amounts of sea-level rise anywhere in the world. 


This Earth Day, we  all need to pledge to do more to get this issue to the top of the agenda for governments and industries around the world. Read up, speak out. If our leaders won't jump, it's up to every one of us to take positive action to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. If possible, buy your energy from a renewable energy supplier. If your politician doesn't act on global warming - vote for someone else who will.

And as your gift to your planet this year, why not adopt just a few of the following tips for making your life a little greener?

What's needed is an energy revolution -- one which overturns the ancient fossil fuel regime and brings forth a new vision. Revolutions don't come from the top. They come from the people. The cost of inaction is, quite literally, the Earth.

Now, send this page to a friend. There, you've done something to save the world already.

(Earth image screen shots © Google.  Thanks to Alex Tingle for creating the sea level overlay maps.)