According to an article written by Kathleen Rogers, President of the Earth Day Network, “scientists are becoming extremely vocal that the point of no return is no more than 10 years away” referring to how much time we have to left to stop global warming before we will no longer have any control over it.

That’s a pretty sobering piece of information. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri who is the chairman of the United Nationa Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that without “deep cuts in concentrations of carbon dioxide, humanity may not survive.”

While some people regard the above statements are “alarmist talk” that is completely without merit, I think the thought of our carelessness taking our planet to the point of no return is so scary that people are discounting it and hoping that saying it’s not true means it won’t be true (much like closing our eyes when we see something scary in the hope that the scary thing will be gone when we open them up again).

Leadership in the United State’s government is taking some action but is it enough action and does it go into effect soon enough? Congress has passed bills requiring auto manufacturers to increase fuel efficiency (something I truly believe could have been done long ago) and they have created a timetable to phase out incandescent light bulbs in favor of much more energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs.

That seems like a pretty pathetic effort in light of the humans facing the possibility of our planet become inhospitable and unable to sustain us.

I’ll go on record right now saying I’m not an expert in global warming or in carbon emissions but I care about our planet and sustaining life on it. To me, most of us can make a significant impact on carbon emmissions just by driving less. We can live closer to work; work from home part-time or full-time; group errands and appointments to condense several driving trips into one; take public transportation; give up our low gas mileage vehicles that we seem to love so much in favor of more energy efficient ones; and walking or biking instead of driving whenever we can.

Even if you are one of the people who believes global warming is an untrue theory instead of fact, it’s hard to deny that we are using up our planet’s resources at an alarming rate and that we need to find alternative energy sources that are clean and renewable.