Global warming is the biggest threat to our planet.
The world is warming faster than at any time in the last 10,000 years. The 1990s was the hottest decade in the past millennium. As global warming increases, its effects are being felt from the highest mountain peaks to deep in the oceans, and from the Equator to the poles.

The global average temperature has increased by about 0.7°C in the last hundred years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts temperatures to rise by up to 5.8°C globally by the end of this century.

Rising temperatures have both direct and indirect influence on our climatic systems. For example, as temperatures rise, the ice caps and glaciers melt, raising sea levels, disrupting ocean currents and dehydrating forests and wetlands.

People at risk
Extreme weather events will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting. The number of shocking examples is growing. In Europe, the heat wave in August 2003 was the hottest in 500 years. In France alone, it killed close to 15,000 people.

Millions of people around the world live less than one metre above sea level. If the heat of global warming melts Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, sea levels could rise by up to 7 metres. Some small island states face complete obliteration.

Global warming is melting glaciers in every region of the world, putting millions of people at risk from floods, droughts and lack of drinking water.

Nature and species at risk
Scientists have revealed that climate change could result in the extinction of more than a million terrestrial species within the next 50 years. Polar bears for example could be extinct within the next 100 years as their habitat virtually disappears.

Coral reefs around the world have been severely damaged by unusually warm ocean temperatures and their decline eliminates essential habitat for fish, sponges and marine turtles, and the livelihood of billions of people.

The rapid rate of global warming puts one-third of the world's forests at risk, as well as the birds, frogs, mammals and other species that depend on forests for their survival.

Canada at risk
Canada's Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet. Certain regions have already experienced temperature increases of as much as 3 to 4° C in the past 50 years. Nearly one million square kilometres of sea ice have already disappeared, posing serious implications for seals, polar bears and entire Arctic communities.

Climate conditions that are suitable for existing forests will be moving north so far and so fast that trees will not be able to keep up. Unable to migrate and colonize fast enough, important commercial tree species will be left stranded where they are now, even when climate conditions are no longer suitable for them. Under such hostile conditions, these trees are likely to reduce in productivity and be more vulnerable to disease, pest damage and fire.

Great Lakes water levels have been, and will continue to, decline resulting in the drying up of small streams, reduction in wetland areas, poor water quality and reduced water availability for clean hydro-electric power.

If global warming was to increase temperatures by 2° C, parts of the Canadian Atlantic will warm by 1.5-2.2° C. For some species that have always lived in these waters, this warming could mean that they would have to squeeze into an increasingly small area that is suitable for living. But for some exotic species common to more southern waters, the Canadian Atlantic could become a new home for them, chasing out existing species and changing the ecological balance.