From the executive summary of the 2009 State of the Future report:
“Although government and business leaders are beginning to respond more seriously to the global environmental situation, it continues to get worse. Each day, the oceans absorb 30 million tons of CO2, increasing their acidity. The number of dead zones—areas with too little oxygen to support life—has doubled every decade since the 1960s. The oceans are warming about 50% faster than the IPCC reported in 2007. The amount of ice flowing out of Greenland during the summer of 2008 was nearly three times more than that lost during the previous year. Arctic summer ice could be gone by 2030, as could many of the major Himalayan, European, and Andean glaciers. Over 36 million hectares of primary forest are lost every year. Human consumption is 30% larger than nature’s capacity to regenerate, and demand on the planet has more than doubled over the past 45 years. This growth continues as, for example, more cars are expected to be produced in China in 2009 than in the U.S. or Japan.
Some environmental forces have been pushing for a U.S.–China 10-year Apollo-like goal with a global energy/environment R&D program. This is not only important for the environment; it is also a strategy to increase the likelihood of international peace. Without some G-2 agreement, it will be difficult to get the kind of global coherence necessary to address climate change seriously. Politicians are arguing that a ceiling of 450 ppm CO2 is the best agreement possible, but our atmosphere has 390 ppm of CO2 now, and glaciers are already melting, polar caps are thinning, insects are migrating, disease patterns have been altering, and temperatures have been rising. A leading NASA climatologist argues that we should reduce atmospheric CO2 to 350 ppm to avoid hitting a point of no return for global warming. We know more about how to move the peak year for GHG emissions closer to the present than rocket pioneer Werner von Braun knew how to land a man on the moon when President Kennedy announced that famous 10-year goal.”
I recommend you to read the full summary (pdf).
