In 2003... the White House conspired with an oil-company funded think tank to block a major government scientific report that sought to spell out the dangers of climate change to Americans.

On our current path, all our great Gulf and Atlantic coast cities are at risk of meeting the same fate as New Orleans.

If Americans in 2100 came to see 12 meters sea-level rise as inevitable by 2200, who can even begin to fathom how the nation would respond?

The first few feet of sea-level rise alone will displace more than 100 million people worldwide and turn all our major Gulf and Atlantic coast cities into pre- Katrina New Orleans - below sea level and facing super-hurricanes.

In 2005... Mumbai, India, saw that country's most intense recorded instance of rainfall - 3 feet of rain in twenty-four hours.

The world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the world that crosses carbon cycle tipping points that quickly take us to 1000 ppm, is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs. It is a world of a hundred Katrinas, of countless environmental refugees

If the politics of inaction and delay that have triumphed in this country continues for another decade, then Planetary Purgatory in the likely future facing our country before midcentury - probably in your own lifetime.