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The climate crisis can seem complicated. Yet as warming accelerates, impacts grow more powerful and solutions become more feasible, I keep coming back to a ten-word summary of climate change that includes all the essentials you really need to know to get involved:

It’s real

It’s us

Experts agree

It’s bad

There’s hope

I am unsure where I first saw this 10-word description, but the power of it lies in its truth, its simplicity, and its empowering message. Yes, it says, you DO know enough to act.

So here is a little bit more about each two-word fact:

1. It’s real. Since 1880, the earth’s climate has warmed 1.8 degree F or 1 degree C. Although this doesn’t sound like a large number, this is extremely rapid warming compared to naturally occurring climate change through most of geologic history. For a graph of what recent global temperature trends look like, updated monthly, you can go to James Hansen’s resources here:  http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/

2. It’s us. Humans are the cause of today’s fast and accelerating climate change. Since 1950, all the climate warming has been caused by human activities, and natural factors have had a small net cooling effect (Huber and Knutti, 2012).

3. Experts agree. There is a robust and durable scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. At least 97% of publishing climate experts have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening. This level of scientific consensus is similar to the scientific consensus that smoking causes lung cancer.

4. It’s bad. The impacts of climate change are costly, deadly, and getting worse. Climate change is already making people sicker, worsening a range of illnesses from seasonal allergies to heart and lung disease. Children, pregnant women, and the elderly are most at risk from extreme weather and rising heat. Climate change is worsening wildfires, floods,and food shocks, harming the world’s oceans, melting ice sheets, and threatening the world’s fisheries, on which billions of people depend.

5. There’s hope. We have the technology and tools needed to avoid the worst climate impacts. Because of the tremendous breakthroughs and cost reductions achieved in renewable energy technologies, experts say we can make a full transition to zero carbon energy in time to avoid the worst impacts of catastrophic climate change we are currently heading toward. We’ve made progress understanding effective policy solutions and the steps we need to take to contain climate change.  What we need is the individual, societal, and political will to make this huge and rapid transformation, and to begin immediately.

Whatever way you are working for climate solutions, whether it’s reducing your carbon footprint, being part of a community group, voting for climate, contacting your elected officials, participating in climate marches, joining Power Up for Climate Solutions, or other ways, I hope you’ll keep at it and if you are able, do a little more.  You know enough, and you matter.