The long-term trends or the expected sequence of records are far more — Global warming

"We dont have much time left. We are moving towards temperature increases of around two degrees Celsius, which is going to have consequences in the tropics, and we will lose things like glaciers. Thats not a theory; its happening right now. Its not a prediction; its happening right now. But you just sightsee near those glaciers. But the glaciers are a big source of water. And on the questions of water, in California we store our water in a snowpack. When thats gone, the rain will be the same but it wont accumulate. With warming temperatures the snowpack will not work. It might be possible to substitute with dams, but thats complicated. This is conjoined with a big energy problem and I think that we really have to encourage development in this area. Just waiting for technological improvement wont work. We need to encourage it."

"There are all kinds of causes to be alarmed about. For example, theres the Greenhouse Effect, which is one of the more recent in a series of alarming worldwide homicidal trends to be discovered by those busy beavers, the scientists. Theyve found that the Earth is slowly being turned into a vast greenhouse, so that by the year 2010- unless something is done- the entire human race will be crushed beneath a humongous tomato. Or something along those lines. I confess that I havent been following the Greenhouse Effect all that closely."

"Is humankind itself hastening its own end? Man has, for instance, been burning carbon-containing fuel — wood, coal, oil, gas — at a steadily accelerating rate. All these fuels form carbon dioxide. Some is absorbed by plants and the oceans but not as fast as it is produced. This means the carbon dioxide content of the air is going up — slightly but nevertheless up. Carbon dioxide retains heat, and even a small rise means a warming of the Earths atmosphere. This may result in the melting of the polar ice caps with unusual speed, flooding the world before we have learned climate control. In reverse, our industrial civilization is making our atmosphere dustier so that it reflects more sunlight away and cools the Earth slightly — thus making possible a glacial advance in a few centuries, also before we have learned climate control."

"Im not saying that the Greenhouse Effect is not extremely important. Hey, I live in Miami, and if the polar ice caps start melting, I stand a good chance of waking up one morning and finding myself festooned with kelp. Its just that, what with working and paying bills and transporting my son to and from the pediatrician and trying to teach the dog not to throw up on the only nice rug in the entire house, I just dont seem to have enough room in my brain for the Greenhouse Effect and all the other problems I know I should be concerned about, such as drugs and AIDS and Lebanon and pollution and cholesterol and caffeine and cancer and Japanese investors buying the Lincoln Memorial and nuclear war and dirty rock lyrics and this new barbecue grill we got."

"Despite its imperfections, the European Union can be, and indeed is, a powerful inspiration for many around the world. The challenges faced from one region to the other may differ in scale but they do not differ in nature. We all share the same planet. Poverty, organized crime, terrorism, climate change: these are problems that do not respect national borders. We share the same aspirations and universal values: these are progressively taking root in a growing number of countries all over the world. We share “l’irréductible humain”, the irreducible uniqueness of the human being. Beyond our nation, beyond our continent, we are all part of one mankind. Jean Monnet, ends his Memoirs with these words: “Les nations souveraines du passé ne sont plus le cadre où peuvent se résoudre les problèmes du présent. Et la communauté elle-même n’est qu’un étape vers les formes d’organisation du monde de demain.” (“The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present. And the European Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of the future.”) This federalist and cosmopolitan vision is one of the most important contributions that the European Union can bring to a global order in the making."

"Right now, climate change is accelerating. We should more properly say an accelerating change in the Earth System—of which our climate is one component. This impact is most obvious at high latitudes. What this means is that if we want to see what our future looks like, the Arctic is the place to look first. And it doesn’t look good. Arctic coastlines are retreating by up to 30 meters per year in areas such as the Laptev Sea and Beaufort Sea. Greenland and Antarctica are now losing somewhere between 300 billion and 600 billion tons of ice mass per year into the sea. And to make matters worse, probably much worse, melting sea ice caused by our activities is now causing the release of significant quantities of methane from the Arctic Ocean. For the first time, over a hundred plumes of methane—many of them over half a mile in diameter—have been observed rising from previously frozen methane stores in the East Siberian Sea. Indeed a conclusion was that thousands of such plumes, many of them nearly a mile across, now exist. This could be very big trouble on a very big scale. Methane is many times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. If, as seems likely, melting sea ice, triggered by our activities, is now causing the release of this methane, it will go on for decades, possibly centuries, and we will be completely unable to stop it. Almost all of the data that’s emerging now from the Arctic is worse—far worse—than the most extreme predictions of even ten years ago. But of course it’s not just the Arctic. It’s everywhere."