Safe Home Planet Yearned
“Vital Signs for the Planet:” What can be learned?
How long, for our politics, can solutions . . . be spurned?
Who’ll take the lead, high tides to be turned?
Six-point-five billion people: safe home planet yearned!
© F.W. Heaton April 2018
This is the second in our April/May 2018 trilogy of posts on the subject of global climate change, this one dealing with two organizations: the first the National Aeronautical & Space Administration (nasa.gov) and the second the Natural Resources Defense Council (nrdc.org). It is likely all have knowledge of the first and fewer are aware of the second.
Whereas NASA doesn’t need much of an introduction, when you click the NASA button at the bottom, it will take you to the portion of their website focused on Global Climate Change. The site provides detailed information on “Global Climate Change: Evidence, Causes, Questions, Resources, Carbon Dioxide, and Graphics/Multimedia.” A study of this information will measurably improve your ability to assess the broad subject of global climate change—what many believe to be the central issue of our time. The phrase in the first line of our poem above, “Vital Signs for the Planet,” comes from NASA’s Global Climate Change webpages, an outstanding resource available to all who are learning to become more “scientifically literate” (more on this in future posts).
In contrast with NASA, the NRDC, like Earthjustice featured in our first post on Global Climate Change, is an organization with whom you may be less familiar. As with Earthjustice, the NRDC similarly focuses on putting top flight lawyers in courts every day in support of the environment and conservation. In existence since 1970 and having achieved a sterling rating of 96.56 (maximum 100) from Charity Navigator (charitynavigator.org), the NRDC, like Earthjustice, provides a very large bang for your environmental buck. For a stunning review of the scope of their work, please click the NRDC button below. For a comprehensive NRDC survey of the Global Climate Change issue, click on the link below and read Melissa Denchak’s 23 February 2017 NRDC article “Global Climate Change: What You Need to Know.”