NoMoreBusinessAsUsual

Time to Take Action!
At least discuss if business as usual is likely to be adequate.
And if not, consider proclaiming a sustainability emergency.

Update:
Interest in stimulating appropriate discussion and action increased markedly in the last year, due to unexpectedly rapid melting at the poles. These concerns motived two Australian groups to publish Climate Code Red: The case for a a sustainability emergency (February 2008). Their 101 page paper is downloadable free from www.ClimateCodeRed.net (CCR). An updated paperback version is being prepared for release in June 2008 in Australia.

A 15 page printable set of excerpts is at http://groups.google.com/group/chicagolandsfuture/files This Google group's goal is to develop a grassroots focused website to synergize appropriate actions.

Global climate chaos (beginning with the Arctic meltdown) may come even sooner than the scientists quoted in CCR envisioned -- 2010 was the earliest forecast for the Arctic ice melt in the CCR paper.
However, according to http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/01/content_7696460.htm
>> The polar cap in the Arctic may well disappear this summer due to the global warming, Dr. Olav Orheim, head of the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, said ..."If Norway's average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away. Two other Polar experts agree.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/science-on-shrinking-north-pole-ice/
101 comments so far... 5/12

Public discussion on taking appropriate action is beginning in the US...
March 9, 2008 http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_8509182
Bill McKibben in his new campaign www.350.org calls 350 ppm the CO2 number that might define our future.

Although according to CCR (quoting Hansen) it may be closer to 300 ppm. Similarly the CCR paper argues that 320ppm is a more appropriate target, based on the level when the Arctic started melting.

Hansen's group recently circulated an article, giving the evidence that a safe CO2 level is at most 350 ppm. This level "may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/StateOfWild_20080428.pdf
Tipping point: Perspective of a climatologist - a 12 page version for the general public
http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126 - Target CO2: Where should humanity aim?, (Submitted to Science 7 Apr & accepted) PLUS http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1135 Target CO2: Supporting material.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/back-to-1988-on-co2-says-nasas-hansen/ has Andrew Revkin's 3/19 review of Hansens view, plus 147 comments as of 3/24

Reviews of CCR with comments:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/5/172318/6361
!!! http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3600 111 threaded comments

http://www.countercurrents.org/henderson210208.htm 10 comments
Climate Code Red - The New Denial And The Failure Of Democracy
By Bill Henderson, 21 February, 2008
....No major media outlet acknowledges let alone critiques or comments upon or otherwise covers the report. None. Not AP nor Reuters; not either ABC nor BBC. Ditto the NY Times, Wash Post, Guardian, Le Monde, Asahi Shimbun or the South China Morning Post. Not one major news agency, paper, TV or radio outlet so much as acknowledges the existence of a report on a subject that is life and death for humanity and most of the species with which we presently share creation on this small blue planet.

Proclaims the urgency but doesn't mention CCR
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2956/
With 58 comments as of 5/12
Snap into Action for the Climate
The terrifying new speed of global warming and our last chance to stop it
by Mike Tidwell, May/June 2008 issue of Orion magazine