People around the world are beginning to wake up and accept that global warming is both a serious issue and reality. With proven data establishing that Arctic ice is melting at a rapid rate, many of the world’s leading scientists fear that the fresh water entering the North Atlantic Ocean will permanently interfere with and reconfigure global sea currents. The reality is simple: ocean currents regulate every ecosystem on earth, and changing ocean currents equal changing ecosystems. As more Arctic ice melts, more surface area of our oceans are exposed to evaporation. This results in warmer air and rain, increased precipitation and further melting. Naturally dry regions will become ridden with drought, while naturally wet areas will experience severe storms and floods.

Thank god we have good integral scientists, otherwise massive petroleum corporations and lawyers and lobbyists like Philip Cooney would still be downplaying the issue. Fortunately, he was caught up in the Bush Administration and was forced to resign in 2005 after manipulating scientific consensuses in government reports. And of course there was The Great Global Warming Swindle, a TV program introduced to the UK public challenging Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. They claimed global warming is a “lie” and “one of the biggest scams of modern time”. Coincidentally, the validity of the Swindle’s facts were supported solely by scientific organizations of major industrialized nations and were criticized heavily by neutral scientists on multiple points.

Despite years of warnings from environmentalists, the issue of global warming only now seems to have been adopted on a mass scale. Yet industry and governments continue to react slower than slugs. Everyone seems to be from the school of thought that if the problem is not in our back yard and we cannot see it, we still have time to fix it. Unfortunately, not so. The ice caps could disappear completely within 60 years, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, unless the world’s biggest polluters achieve a major reduction in emission standards. A grim reality considering that six of the world’s largest polluters (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States) all stressed at the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate conference that they would be dependent on fossil fuels for years to come. This is despite millions in corporate investment for green technologies.

Although rising sea levels, glacial retraction, extreme weather, expansion of tropical disease, and unexplainable shifts in agriculture may not yet impact all of us in our daily lives - the threats are imminent. If you don’t care about the extinction of our creatures and the destruction of our landscapes, you will care when the quality lifestyle you enjoy - the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the air you breath, and the house you live in - is only afforded by the few wealthiest people in the world.

Visually representing this sad phenomenon exceptionally well is Arctic Tale, the latest documentary from National Geographic. The story chronicles the lives of both a polar bear and walrus from birth to maturity and the struggles they face due to the effects climate change has on their habitat. If human kind continues on its current course, we as humans will eventually drown as well in the storms and floods that will hit our coasts. Sadly, the life as depicted in 1995’s Waterworld may become reality, and sooner than we think. Start saving your earth dirt now.