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The Tipping Point has arrived

The Toronto Star reports on where we are at in climate control - at the tipping point:

“We have reached a point of planetary emergency,” he said.

“There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control.”

During a speech at the National Press Club, he rambled, as if his ideas were sprinting well ahead of his words, but he kept an overflow ballroom audience rapt.

Already, he said, the world’s safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been exceeded.

Yet, in the 20 years since he first testified, no major U.S. law restricting greenhouse gas emissions has been passed, 21 new coal-fired generating units have been built at power plants in this country and total U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide have climbed by about 18 per cent.

“If there is any single moment that marked the turning point where the climate issue became a serious public policy issue, June 23, 1988, had to be seen as that moment,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute.

“(Yesterday) may mark a second kind of turning point.”

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