You're getting warmer...

The US, with just 4% of the world's population, produces more than 20% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change is a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism, the UK Government's chief scientific adviser has said. ...

And without immediate action flooding, drought, hunger and debilitating diseases such as malaria would hit millions of people around the world. ...

Sir David [King] criticised the Bush administration for relying too exclusively on market-based incentives and voluntary actions.

He told Science, the "house magazine" of the US scientific establishment: "As the world's only remaining superpower, the United States is accustomed to leading internationally co-ordinated action.

"But at present the US Government is failing to take up the challenge of global warming." ...

[D]espite declaring support for the UNFCC's [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] objectives, the US had failed to ratify the Kyoto accord for emission reductions and "refused to countenance any remedial action now or in the future".

I wouldn't be surprised if Sir David gets hammered from some quarters - including those where dealing with climate change would be let's call it economically inconvenient - for supposedly "minimizing the threat of terrorism." But of course he did no such thing. If I say that more people die of heart disease than of cancer (which is true), am I "minimizing" cancer?

More to the point, over the longer term Sir David is simply right. The lives taken by terrorism, for all its horror, don't begin to approach the tens of millions put at risk by "flooding, drought, hunger, and disease" over the next 50 years or so by climate change. It - and our nation's (and our) utter failure to act on it - is the environmental issue of our time. And soon enough, as the effects, already visible, reach a level that can't be denied, it will become the international political issue of our time.

Footnote 1: The definition of "terrorism" used here, of course, is the traditional, limited one under which governments need not apply. By the more expansive definition I prefer, "violence inflicted on innocents for political gain," the continued existence of nuclear weapons in the world sharply changes the relative potential damage inflicted by climate change v. terrorism.

Footnote 2: An item just yesterday about climate change, including links to some earlier posts, is here.