Good Day World!
There are good milestones, and there’s bad ones.
The day you marry someone is a good milestone. Something to be remembered for the duration of a partnership.
Heightened greenhouse gas levels are a bad milestone. Each time the levels increase, our planet’s health decreases.
The latest milestone no one wants to celebrate is the monthly global average concentration of carbon dioxide breaking 400 parts per million for the first time since record-keeping of greenhouse gas levels began.
The milestone, reached last month, was announced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently.
"It was only a matter of time that we would average 400 parts per million globally," said NOAA scientist Pieter Tans in a press release. "We first reported 400 ppm when all of our Arctic sites reached that value in the spring of 2012. In 2013 the record at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory first crossed the 400 ppm threshold. Reaching 400 parts per million as a global average is a significant milestone."
Crossing the 400 ppm threshold is equal parts disheartening and alarming. Less than a decade ago scientists and environmental activists, including Bill McKibben, launched a campaign to convince policy makers that global CO2 concentrations needed to be reduced to 350 ppm in order to avoid massive impacts from global warming.
Mother Jones published this article recently (May 6th) about global warming and the impact this new milestone will have.
Time for me to walk on down the road…
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