IS IT TOO LATE TO DO ANYTHING? NOT AT ALL. First, let’s face it: disasters are bound to occur – as disheartening as it is, that’s Mother Nature at work. And it’s also true that even if we completely stopped emitting carbon pollution today, we’d continue to experience climate change impacts for a considerable time to come. The pollution that has caused our current crisis stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years; climate change is not a phenomenon that can be stopped in its tracks immediately. But it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to prevent the worst of it. And it certainly could get much worse. Acting now to swiftly transition from dirty fossil fuels to clean energy can limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Two degrees of warming could have significant impacts, there’s no denying. But if we do nothing and continue on the path we’re on, the global average temperature could rise 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. To say the difference between these two scenarios would be dramatic is perhaps quite literally the understatement of the century. Good thing we have the practical, clean-energy solutions to do it! 17