You can help stop the #1 threat to polar bears and our planet.
Without federal protection, the polar bear could become the first mammal to lose 100 percent of its habitat to global warming. And global warming is the leading threat to our planet as a whole. During the past 200 years, our industrial economy has overloaded the earth's atmosphere with carbon dioxide, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up. Today, the United States is the world's leading source of global warming pollution, produced mostly by coal-burning power plants and automobiles.
A rise in global temperature of one degree Fahrenheit has already caused the polar ice cap to shrink, malaria and other illnesses to afflict more people, and heat waves, wildfires, droughts, and hurricanes to intensify. Allowing temperatures to rise more than another 2 degrees Fahrenheit threatens to trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet, a 20-foot rise in sea levels, and the extinction of species, including the polar bear. Our only chance to avert such catastrophic outcomes is to act now to reduce global warming pollution. Stabilizing the world’s climate demands that the United States cut its carbon emissions 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.
NRDC has a comprehensive plan for reaching that ambitious target. We are working to secure new laws and policies -- both state and federal -- that set mandatory limits on global warming pollution. We must move America beyond oil by promoting the widespread adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles, clean fuels and public transit that turn down the heat on global warming. And we're championing measures to renew our energy future by rewarding energy efficiency and requiring utilities to generate 25 percent of their electricity from zero-pollution, renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal power.
Please join the NRDC Action Fund's campaign to pass legislation that will cut our nation's global warming pollution 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050: http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/Act_Now_To_Stop_Global_Warming
