Our planetary emergency

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In Washington on Monday, James Hansen -- director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and long one of the experts on global warming -- said this:

We have reached a point of planetary emergency.

There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control.

And we are -- according to Hansen and the overwhelming scientific consensus -- almost there.

Hooray for humanity.