The reality of global warming and climate change is indisputable. The vast majority of scientists in all countries who have addressed this subject have spoken: global warming is real, and it is happening now. The world's scientists also harbor no doubt as to the cause. It is humanity's discharge into the atmosphere of enormous amounts of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases." This unprecedented assemblage of scientists has also predicted that runaway global warming will result in nothing short of a biological, environmental, social, and economic cataclysm.

What remains to be seen is precisely how global warming effects will play out. The world's scientists have explained that the timing and extent of global warming-caused catastrophes will in many cases be determined by various "tipping points," or environmental states beyond which there can be no return. The most immediately understood tipping point is based on the melting of our polar ice caps that is occurring in a dramatically rapid nonlinear and exponential manner resulting from powerful feedback loops.

Of all the governmental and nongovernmental entities and collectives poised to fight global warming, one of the leaders in the fight will be the land trust community.