...99 percent confident that the world really was getting warmer and that there was a high degree of probability that it was due to human-made greenhouse gases.

Only in the last few years did the science crystallize, revealing the urgency - our planet really is in peril. If we do not change course soon, we will hand our children a situation that is out of their control.

I was lucky to grow up at a time when it was not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the state university.

We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.

If we fail to act, we will end up with a different planet.

...the global surface albedo [surface whiteness] and greenhouse gas changes account for practically the entire global climate change.

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm... If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.