If there is a silver lining to the human-caused climate change crisis, it is a short-burn issue. Life on Earth will continue as it always has if we fail to solve the health-care crisis or repair our aging infrastructure in the coming decades. Not so with climate change.

Recent scientific studies indicate that if humanity doesn't stabilize and rapidly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions within the next seven years, the rate of climate change will be beyond the point of human control. This would ultimately result in the extinction of one-third to one-half of all the planet's plant and animal species before the end of this century and likely jeopardize civilization.

Recently scientists have drawn some lines in the sand which illustrate the short-burn nature of this problem. NASA's chief climatologist, Dr. Jim Hansen, on June 23, 2008, testified before Congress that "The next president and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation. Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control."