The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads dengue fever and yellow fever, has traditionally been unable to survive at altitudes higher than 1,000 meters because of colder temperatures there. But with recent warming trends, those mosquitoes have now been reported at 1,240 meters in Costa Rica and at 2,200 meters in Columbia. Malaria-bearing mosquitoes, too, have moved to higher elevations in central Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America, triggering new outbreaks of the disease.

Climate change is not an environmental problem. It is a civilizational problem. Climate change is not just another issue. If it is not addressed in very short order, it will swamp every other issue facing us today

Climate change is not just another issue. It is the issue that, unchecked, will swamp all other issues. The only hope lies in all the countries of the world coming together around a common global project to rewire the world with clean energy. This is a path to peace -- peace among people, and peace between people and nature.

Absent the rapid mobilization of climate advocates at every level - and the pooling of all their energy, creativity, and resources into a coordinated, no-holds-barred campaign - we will soon be crossing the threshold into climate hell.

The largest source of greenhouse gases in the coming decades will not be the US, Western Europe and Japan, but the developing economies of East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The coming eruption of carbon emissions from the poor world will dwarf any reductions in the North.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads dengue fever and yellow fever, has traditionally been unable to survive at altitudes higher than 1,000 meters because of colder temperatures there. But with recent warming trends, those mosquitoes have now been reported at 1,240 meters in Costa Rica and at 2,200 meters in Columbia. Malaria-bearing mosquitoes, too, have moved to higher elevations in central Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America, triggering new outbreaks of the disease.

To restore our inflamed atmosphere to a hospitable state requires nothing less than rewiring the entire globe - and replace every oil-burning furnace, every gasoline-burning car, every coal-burning generating plant, with renewable, climate-friendly energy sources. The earth's fossil fuel resources have blessed us with a level of prosperity and abundance unimaginable a century ago. Today they are propelling us forward into a century of disintegration.