Bill McKibben, Co-Founder of 350.org and author of The End of Nature, will be holding an online Chat at Washingtonpost.com today. You can submit questions in advance or during the chat.

Bill had a powerful piece in yesterday’s Washington Post:

Imagine an American president willing to take his Cabinet underwater off the Florida Keys. Or, more realistically, imagine an American president who would take the press corps to Glacier National Park so they could hike the dwindling ice fields, then fly them above the millions of acres of dead lodgepole pines covering much of the West, and then take them to stand on the levees in New Orleans. These are the kinds of stunts Obama knew how to pull off when he was running for president; they seem to be the kind of things he forgot about once he got the office.

And they’re exactly what he needs to do if we’re going to deal with climate in the short time science gives us. A mediocre health-care bill is one thing; you can probably come back in a generation and make it stronger. People may suffer in the meantime, but the problem won’t become logarithmically worse. The climate, on the other hand, is full of traps and tipping points — let it get warm enough to melt the permafrost that locks away vast supplies of methane, and no future president will be able to control the heating. If there were ever a challenge that called for focus, this is it.

Climatewire:

Nearly 200 countries have signed a U.N. treaty pledging to avoid “dangerous” climate change. But lately, it seems, “dangerous” is lost in translation. Fifteen years since that agreement took effect, scientists and governments are still grappling with what carrying out its promise means.

For the European Union, it means limiting Earth’s warming to just 2 degrees Celsius hotter by the end of this century than it was before the Industrial Revolution. That’s a goal many experts believe is roughly equivalent to capping atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 parts per million. But a growing number of countries — mostly vulnerable ones and small island nations like the Maldives — say that won’t prevent rising sea levels from swamping their coasts.

20 Scientists recently sent the letter below to Congress urging them to adopt an even stricter goal:

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Learn more at 350.org.

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