• Scientific Integrity
• Global Warming
• Clean Vehicles
• Clean Energy
• Nuclear Power
• Nuclear Weapons & Global Security
• Food and Agriculture

 Fall 2009

People around the United States are seeing the effects of global warming in their own backyards. Our new anthology of climate-related essays and photographs underscores the need to address this crisis quickly.

The first reading assignment for the 500 incoming students at Virginia's Bridgewater College was not Dickens or Dostoyevsky, but passages from a new Union of Concerned Scientists book: Thoreau's Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. The small liberal-arts college chose the book—which features 67 essays, illustrations, and photographs—as the centerpiece of its Welcome Week program, which culminated in an address by Bronwyn Mitchell, executive director of the Maryland Association for Outdoor and Environmental Education and a contributor to the anthology.

Each entry in the book, which UCS produced in collaboration with literary publisher Penguin Classics, emulates a uniquely American tradition of environmental writing begun by Henry David Thoreau. We drew the published selections from nearly a thousand submissions describing beloved places, animals, plants, people, and activities at risk from a changing climate, and the efforts people are making to save them.

For example, we see changes in New England through the eyes of an observant ninth-grader. We learn how rising temperatures are affecting the Yakama Indians' way of life. We follow a family whose faith has led them on a journey to protect the planet. And we get a useful, if painful, lesson from a New Orleans native who can never go home again after Hurricane Katrina.

In the foreword, author Barbara Kingsolver says, "We must radically reconsider the power relationship between humans and our habitat." The contributors to Thoreau's Legacy do just that.

You can read Thoreau's Legacy for free online. You can also order copies of the book in limited-edition hardcover format ($24.95) or in a free digital format for the Kindle and other portable readers. In the meantime, enjoy these selections from the book.

Michael Gold
The Heat Is Always On

The heat comes up through the radiator, filling my New York City apartment with warmth it doesn't need. It's mid-November and 60 degrees. The pipes are banging as the hot air, fired by oil, comes up from the boiler in the basement.

The building managers think that November is supposed to be cold (and who could blame them?), so the heat comes up as scheduled. I open all the windows to bleed off the heat and welcome the cool breeze blowing in.

I hate the waste of it all. If the management could turn off the unneeded heat, we wouldn't have to burn so much oil, which will only make us all warmer in coming years.

The place where I work operates on an even more unnatural heating schedule, sometimes starting in October. The room I work in feels like a blast furnace, and I open as many windows as I can to cool off. Doesn't anyone realize that with our new warmer weather we don't have to turn on the heat so early?

My daughter, who is two years old, runs to me for a hug whenever she hears the pipes banging in our apartment.

"Scared," she says.
I ask her what's scaring her.
"Heat."
She thinks it's a monster. I think she's right.

Michael Gold works and lives in Queens, NY.

Melanie Szulczewski
One Professor in a Classroom

When you hear the sound of snoring in your classroom as you discuss the causes and implications of global warming, it is easy to become discouraged. And when a skeptical student asks, "Can one person really make a difference?" sometimes all I can do is sigh and wearily think, I'm trying to.

As I observe my students drive to campus in their SUVs and balk at taking the subway for a group trip to a science museum, clamoring instead for the gas-guzzling vans other professors use, I can't help but consider the nature of my role as an environmental science professor. Should I limit myself to explaining the facts behind the greenhouse effect and the consequences to the earth's ecosystems from climate change? Perhaps

I shouldn't try to persuade students to become stewards of their environment by showing graphs of carbon-dioxide emissions from various sources and then displaying images of fuel-efficient cars and compact fluorescent lightbulbs and the cumulative effects of using them. I even try appealing to their wallets by having them calculate the savings to their electricity bills and fuel-pump expenses if they changed to a more sustainable lifestyle.

One student raises his hand to ask, "Will that formula be on the test?" Sigh.

Then, at the end of the semester, a student shows up with a newspaper and a bulging plastic bag. She waves the paper enthusiastically and says, "There's a sale on compact fluorescent lightbulbs—I just bought two packs!" Another student asks for directions to the store and explains that she convinced her mother to buy a front-loading washing machine. As the students chatter about their ideas for reducing their carbon footprints and for passing on information to their families, I realize that they have been listening to me. But, more importantly, their new knowledge has motivated many of them to take action to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions and even persuade others to do so too. I feel rejuvenated as I conclude that no matter what some experts say, one professor in a classroom really can make a difference.

Melanie Szulczewski is an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA.

David Beebe
A Beautiful Shrimp

I can't help it. The closer I look, the more I'm drawn in. This spot shrimp came from hundreds of feet below the dark waters of southeastern Alaska's Alexander Archipelago—a place where the sun, as well as our awareness, truly does not shine.

At first glance, the spot shrimp comes off as almost cartoonish—or otherworldly. Then, after taking in this creature for a few seconds, I'm taken aback by the exquisite intricacy of its luminescent compound eyes, its striped and segmented legs and beautifully marked shell, all composed of the seemingly impossible melding of carbon and calcium molecules suspended in the sea, which somehow coalesce into an exquisite structural form of utility, complexity, and beauty.

Yet because of global warming, in the acidified oceans that scientists say are only 50 years into our future, this kind of shell will dissolve before it fully forms. Our oceans have always played the important role of absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. But because of the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere through the use of coal and petroleum products, deforestation, and forest fires, our oceans are becoming more acidic.

I can't help it. The more I hear about ocean acidification, the more concerned I become. It is time for a much greater awareness of this debacle. Most humans' appreciation of marine ecosystems stops at the reflections from the surface of the water and resumes at their dinner plates. My job as a commercial fisherman starts where most people's vision stops, just below the surface of the water, where I pursue and capture the largess of intact ecosystems for the world's dining tables. As a fisherman, I'm fated to be among the first to witness what happens in our oceans in the coming years, perhaps one of the first to glimpse firsthand the full magnitude of impacts on the planet from acidified oceans.

According to recent studies, ocean acidification from unchecked global warming threatens marine ecosystems that supply food for over half of the world's population. If scientific calculations are correct, and we have every reason to believe they are, ocean acidification will create catastrophic changes, leading to a famine of unimaginable proportions. Fortunately, we can avoid this catastrophe if we act quickly to reduce carbon emissions. Here's hoping a greater public awareness of global warming and ocean acidification will keep our marine ecosystems intact so we can continue to feed the world.

David Beebe is a Vietnam veteran who has worked as a commercial fisherman for the last 25 years. He lives in Petersburg, AK, in the heart of the Tongass National Forest.