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Change, whose members shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He has many other accomplishments in the area of climate science. He has been described as "a cross between Woody Allen and Carl Sagan" for his informative and entertaining teaching style. Dr. Alley began his presentation with the "skinny version of the program," which is that "we enjoy the good that we get from energy use, which is now primarily from fossil fuels. We must change or suffer really, really serious consequences and the sooner we start changing the better off we will be economically and in other ways. So you can now enjoy your dinner." The problem is the huge volume of carbon dioxide (CO2) we are now emitting into the atmosphere, many of us without realizing it, because CO2 is invisible. To illustrate the point, Dr. Alley asked the audience to compare the weight of household trash per person per year in America, which is less than 1,000 pounds, to the weight of CO2 put into the atmosphere per person per year in America, which is about 40,000 pounds. "This cannot continue," he explained. "We are burning fossil fuels roughly a million times faster than nature saved them for us." The result is an unprecedented level of CO2 in the atmosphere. For 800,000 years CO2 levels ranged from 180 to 280 parts per million, and continued at the upper end of that range for the 8,000 years of human civilization. That number has risen since the Industrial Revolution, with most of that rise in recent decades, to 400 parts per million, a mark we just passed in 2013, and it is still rising. The accompanying chart (see page 23) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that shows the change in CO2 levels over time, more specifically, the spike in CO2 levels caused by burning fossil fuels. CO2 blocks cooling, something science has known for a long time, and more CO2 will block more cooling of the Earth as it emits energy from the sun's rays. This is why, when asked if he "believes in global warming," Dr. Alley responds: "We don't believe it. It's physics. And it's physics like if I drop this pencil it will fall down. There isn't another side of that." Will global warming have adverse consequences? At this point it seems that there will be consequences no matter what, but unless CO2 emissions are reduced a lot more quickly it will cause serious changes for life on earth, including sea level rise imperiling the lives of many people around the world, not to mention food shortage and loss of biodiversity, to name just a few problems we can expect. Dr. Alley said that all of the uncertainties about climate change relate to the downside risk. As he put it when he spoke upon his election to the Royal Society this past summer: "we are doing a huge geochemical experiment in the world by putting CO2 up and the uncertainties about what it might do are mostly on the bad side." Many scientists, governments and the United Nations have concluded that we must reduce CO2 emissions quickly to limit further temperature increase to no more than another two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), or face devastating consequences. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has advised that greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 will have to be 40 to 70 percent lower than what they were in 2010, and by the end of the century they will need to be at zero. Even then, we will have to consider yet unknown technology to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Or face devastating consequences. This isn't something that can easily be ignored. These are the findings and conclusions of the entire scientific community around the world developed for more than 25 years. An international outcry for action on climate change grows louder every day, supported by the United Nations and many of the world's governments, including countries with millions of people living near sea level who will have no place to go. Many religious leaders from all faiths have spoken out strongly. Pope Francis is said to be preparing an encyclical. The Rockefeller family is divesting its holdings in fossil fuels. Much is being done to address or at least understand the problem. Scientists, economists and planners the philadelphia lawyer Winter 2015 21 People ask, why lawyers? Because the solution to climate change must be expressed in law. In fact, the problem in one sense can be said to have occurred because of a lack of legal restriction. But more, the problem is so important and urgent that it deserves the attention of our profession. We've done it before on other issues of great importance to us and our families, issues like independence, abolition of slavery and civil rights. Lawyers and the legal community played leading roles in all of those causes.