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1: “It was once called the Amazon Rain Forest”

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1: “It was once called the Amazon Rain Forest”

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The author has deliberately conveyed a message to us by referring to the ‘Amazon Rain Forest’ in the past tense. Follow the link and conduct your own research on the internet when answering these questions:

a) In your own words, briefly explain what this message to future generations is in the context of deforestation,
b) How many years from now it will take before the Amazon Rain Forest is destroyed if humans don't stop chopping down trees at the current rate
c) In what ways has the video and your own research helped you to understand the issue of deforestation and its impact?

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If you want to see the world's climate changing, fly over a tropical country. Thirty years ago, a wide belt of rainforest circled the earth, covering much of Latin America, south-east Asia and Africa. Today, it is being rapidly replaced by great swathes of palm oil trees and rubber plantations, land cleared for cattle grazing, soya farming, expanding cities, dams and logging.

People have been deforesting the tropics for thousands of years for timber and farming, but now, nothing less than the physical transformation of the Earth is taking place. Every year about 18m hectares of forest - an area the size of England and Wales - is felled. In just 40 years, possibly 1bn hectares, the equivalent of Europe, has gone. Half the world's rainforests have been razed in a century, and the latest satellite analysis shows that in the last 15 years new hotspots have emerged from Cambodia to Liberia. At current rates, they will vanish altogether in 100 years.

About 12% of all man-made climate emissions now comes from deforestation, mostly in tropical areas

As fast as the trees go, the chance of slowing or reversing climate change becomes slimmer. Tropical deforestation causes carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, to linger in the atmosphere and trap solar radiation. This raises temperatures and leads to climate change: deforestation in Latin America, Asia and Africa can affect rainfall and weather everywhere from the US Midwest, to Europe and China.

The consensus of the world's atmospheric scientists is that about 12% of all man-made climate emissions - nearly as much as the world's 1.2bn cars and lorries - now comes from deforestation, mostly in tropical areas. Conserving forests is critical; the carbon locked up in Democratic Republic of the Congo's 150m hectares of forests are nearly three times the world's global annual emissions.

And as the forests come down, the people who live in or around them and depend on them become impoverished. Without the forests, people migrate to cities, or move to richer countries in search of work. The world's rainforests not only provide food, energy security, incomes and medicinal plants for 300 million people, but are home to the richest wildlife in the world.

So, what to do? The positive news is that all countries formally pledged at the Paris climate summit in December 2015 to reduce emissions and keep global temperature rises to well below 2C; and in so doing they recognised that this would not be possible without stopping or at least reducing tropical deforestation.

The 50 or more developing countries who share the world's tropical forests all recognised their contribution and promised to crack down on illegal forestry, replant trees and restore degraded forest lands.

Some countries were highly ambitious. China, Brazil, Bolivia and Congo DRC together put forward targets that could protect over 50 million hectares of forest over the next 15 years, an area the size of Spain.

Indonesia, the world's sixth largest carbon emitter, promised to cut its emissions by 29% by ending illegal deforestation and restoring 12m hectares of forested land. Ecuador said that it planned to restore 500,000 hectares of forest land by 2017 and then increase that amount by 100,000 hectares a year. Honduras committed to plant or restore 1m hectares of forest by 2030.

If countries stick to their pledges and let damaged forests recover, annual global greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by as much as 24 to 30% - an enormous step.

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A logging mill in the Amazon Basin, Peru. Photograph: Jason Edwards/Getty Images/National Geographic Magazines

The science and economics needed to stem deforestation are in place, but there is one huge caveat: countries with tropical forests are some of the poorest in the world, desperate to develop and use their natural resources to grow their economies. Their pledges to stop or reduce deforestation are mostly conditional on rich countries financially and technically helping them achieve this - and the onus on reducing emissions is on these rich countries which have historically caused most climate change.

Rich countries pledged at Paris to raise $100bn a year to help poor countries reduce their emissions. Some of that money should go to tropical forest protection.

In addition, a new UN-backed mechanism called Redd (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) has been initiated that involves rich countries paying countries to protect forests and the carbon stored within them. Tropical and sub-tropical countries could receive both public and private funding if they succeed in reducing their emissions from deforestation. But this is deeply controversial as global schemes are prone to corruption, difficult to implement and hard to measure.

If there is money to protect forests, will it go to big companies as subsidy, or lead to evictions of people and human rights abuses?

There must be safeguards, but Germany, Norway and the UK have together promised up to $1bn a year for Redd schemes until 2020. The World Bank plans to contribute a similar amount to work with African countries. A further fund is intended to benefit indigenous and other forest communities which have been the traditional protectors of the forest.

Until Paris, stopping tropical deforestation was at best unlikely and probably impossible. It remains very difficult, but a political and financial mechanism has now been created to incentivise countries, companies and communities to do so at a fraction of the cost of reducing comparable emissions in the US or Europe. Protecting the forests now depends on rich governments not ducking their responsibilities and playing their part.

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow@GuardianGDP on Twitter Topics

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cop 21: un climate change conference | paris

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We are destroying rainforests so quickly they may be gone in 100 years | John Vidal

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If you want to see the world's climate changing, fly over a tropical country. Thirty years ago, a wide belt of rainforest circled the earth, covering much of Latin America, south-east Asia and Africa. Today, it is being rapidly replaced by great swathes of palm oil trees and rubber plantations, land cleared for cattle grazing, soya farming, expanding cities, dams and logging.

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2: "Well let me tell you that trees are amazing, and I mean, we literally breath the air they are creating, and they clean up our pollution, our carbon, they store and purify water, give us medicine that cures ours diseases, food that feeds us"

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2: "Well let me tell you that trees are amazing, and I mean, we literally breath the air they are creating, and they clean up our pollution, our carbon, they store and purify water, give us medicine that cures ours diseases, food that feeds us"

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Students must consider the different claims made by Ea Prince to research how trees provide medicine, oxygen, store and purify water, cure diseases, etc… OR Students may choose to research some of the countries and the impact of deforestation, e.g The Brazilian Rosewood Forest Conservation Project and The Mai Ndombe Forest Conservation Project (students may choose to use another example if they wish).

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Trees help cool our cities, clean our air, help with mental health and so much more! Learn how trees work to benefit our urban environment.

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The Brazilian Rosewood Forest Conservation Project

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The Brazilian Rosewood Forest Conservation Project

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Follow this link:

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Brazil

Pará, Brazil houses one of the most diverse and abundant ecosystems on the planet. The Brazilian Rosewood Project in the Pará's Portel municipality works to protect this fragile ecosystem by stopping rampant deforestation of carbon-dense rainforest while allowing degraded forests an opportunity to regenerate.

By supporting this project you are investing back into the community - 130 families in total - to provide employment for forest protection, and legal land-use permits that keep illegal deforesters away while protecting threatened species and local livelihoods in the process. The project also supports local villages to strengthen their social structure, improve food security through agroforestry techniques, and encourages less fuelwood usage by implementing energy-efficient cookstoves, which produce additional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Key Facts

Protects threatened tree species like Brazilian Rosewood, and endangered species of animals like giant anteaters and the Ka'apor capuchin monkey

Provides secured land tenure to villages committed to conservation

Improves local nutrition through food diversification and agroforestry practices

Provides jobs in forest management, and education in forest preservation

Creates opportunities for communities to develop local businesses

This project will prevent net emissions of at least 20 Million tCO2e over the project's 40-year lifetime. It is validated and verified to the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and validated to the Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards Second Edition, achieving Climate Adaptation and Biodiversity Gold Levels.

project impacts

The project is adjacent to the Caxiuanã National Forest, a protected area with high biodiversity. The project activities will avoid ecosystem fragmentation and loss thus providing a safe and functional environment for at least 30 threatened species including:

Ka'apor capuchin monkey

Black bearded saki

Black-handed tamarin

Giant anteater

Giant otter

Golden parakeet

The project aims to create respect and protection of forest resources through secured land tenure and employment incentives through legal land tenure and land-usage rights. The only economic activity in the area was the production and sale of cassava flour. Now, the Brazilian Rosewood Forest Conservation Project introduces new income streams with jobs in forest patrolling and biodiversity monitoring. In addition, 5% of the revenues of Stand For Trees Certificate sales fund local sustainable initiatives. In partnership with local NGOs, the project will provide capacity building for families to develop and submit business plans to start small sustainable businesses that take advantage of available non-timber products.

The project supports agroforestry techniques for the community to provide and diversify food consumption and supports sustainable production of cassava for farinha production. Local villagers receive free training in methodologies and procedures to monitor the project area. The project also provides energy-efficient cooking stoves for cassava production to villagers within and nearby the project boundary.

This project will prevent net emissions of at least 20 Million tCO2e over the project's 40-year lifetime. It is validated and verified to the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and validated to the Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards Second Edition, achieving Climate Adaptation and Biodiversity Gold Levels.

Project Representative

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Check out the Brazilian Rosewood Rainforest Conservation Project

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Pará, Brazil houses one of the most diverse and abundant ecosystems on the planet. The Brazilian Rosewood Project in the Pará's Portel municipality works to protect this fragile ecosystem by stopping rampant deforestation of carbon-dense rainforest while allowing degraded forests an opportunity to regenerate.

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The Mai Ndombe Forest Conservation Project

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The Mai Ndombe Forest Conservation Project

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Follow the link:

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Project Brief

The Mai Ndombe REDD+ project protects approximately 300,000 hectares of humid tropical and swamp forest located in the central part of the Congo River basin in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The area was a former logging concession on the shores of Lac Mai Ndombe (Black Water Lake) that was suspended in 2007. A Canadian company with a local DRC partner spent 3 years to acquire the concession rights from the government of the DRC to prevent the concession from being re-awarded to another logging company. The project and surrounding area have been designated as a high conservation priority within the Congo Basin, and provides habitat for threatened and endemic species such as bonobos and forest elephants, and includes some of the most important wetlands in the world.

The project is also home to some 50,000 people, most of whom live on the shores of Lake Mai Ndombe. Shortages in clean drinking water access, chronic lack of financial resources for education and healthcare, and serious concerns over food security, nutrition, and economic alternatives make the need for an integrated approach to sustainable development crucial for communities in the project area. Sales from the project's Verified Emissions Reductions will therefore provide a pathway to low-carbon economic development - supporting improved access to potable water, agricultural and economic diversification, education and healthcare development, and capacity building activities to empower local communities. The Mai Ndombe REDD+ project is expected to reduce emissions by more than 100 million tonnes of CO ₂ over the next 30 years.

The Mai Ndombe project makes REDD+ a viable economic alternative to unsustainable commercial logging, helping to prevent the primary and secondary forest extraction that used to cause regional ecosystem fragmentation, biodiversity loss, soil degradation, and wetland sedimentation. The project's forest conservation activities not only safeguard local communities' environmental health and economic livelihoods, but also their traditional, spiritual, and cultural values.

Support this project! "

Tree nursery in Selenge that was built for agroforestry.

Project Impacts

About the Project Developer

Wildlife Works

Wildlife Works was founded in 1997 with a simple yet powerful idea. If you want to protect endangered wildlife, you need to balance the needs of wildlife with the need for work for those rural communities who share the same environment. Our mission is to bring market-based solutions to conservation of biodiversity by providing sustainable economic benefits to rural communities so they can aspire to a better life or simply feed their children and put them through school without damaging the environment in which they live.

Project Gallery

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The Mai Ndombe REDD+ project protects approximately 300,000 hectares of humid tropical and swamp forest located in the central part of the Congo River basin in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The area was a former logging concession on the shores of Lac Mai Ndombe (Black Water Lake) that was suspended in 2007.

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3: “I read how the Native Americans had such consideration for the planet that they felt responsible for how they left the land for the next 7 generations. Which brings me great sorrow, because most of us today don't even care about tomorrow”

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3: “I read how the Native Americans had such consideration for the planet that they felt responsible for how they left the land for the next 7 generations. Which brings me great sorrow, because most of us today don't even care about tomorrow”

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Explain in your own words what the ‘7th Generation Principle’ is. How, in your opinion, does the mindset of the Native Americans differ to that of most societies regarding the environment?

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Whenever I mention the 7th Generation principle to most people, they think I'm talking about laundry detergent.

I'm always surprised that more people don't know the origin of the term, so I felt it deserved a post of its own.

The "7th generation" principle taught by Native Americans says that in every decision, be it personal, governmental or corporate, we must consider how it will affect our descendents seven generations into the future. So that the pristine sky, field and mountains in this photo will still be here for them to enjoy.

[Western society generally considers a generation to be 25 years; the Lakota Nation considers one generation to be 100 years]..

It is clearly not embraced by most governments and corporations in the world today. I mean, when was the last time any of us thought about who's coming along seven generations from now?

The 7th generation principal was so important to Native American cultures that it was codified in the Iroquois Great Law of Peace. To my knowledge, all Native American and indigenous tribes throughout the world embrace this teaching.

Those of us descended from the European culture have generally not given it a second thought.

Long before environmentalists got us thinking about "carbon footprints" and "sustainability," indigenous peoples lived in balance with the world around them.

It's even defined in their language:

Mitakuye oyasin [Lakota]

Nogomaq [Algonquian]

Gakina-awiiya [Anishinaabe]

Ea Nigada Qusdi Idadadvhn [Cherokee]

All these terms mean, " we are all related to, and respect, everything in life."

Native American tribes didn't even have a word for "ecology" - respect for the earth was so ingrained in their lifestyle that one word would be too limiting.

The earliest recording of the 7th Generation principle dates back to the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy created in the 12th Century. When our Founding Fathers looked for examples of effective government and human liberty upon which to model a Constitution to unite the thirteen colonies, they found it in the government of the Iroquois Nation, which, at that point, had stood for hundreds of years.

Ironically, in drafting our constitution, our founders left out one of the essential principles of the Great Law of Peace: the 7th Generation principle.

It is ironic, because it is the heart of this very successful model of government - the Iroquois Great Law of Peace has today stood for 1,000 years.

It is the omission of the 7th Generation principle and the role of women in government that led Native Americans to say that, the U.S. copied the Great Law of Peace but didn't really understand it.

How to live by the 7th Generation principle

To live by this principle, one would ask, prior to any undertaking, how it will affect the land, water, air, animals, birds, plants and the future for our children seven generations into the future?

How does it apply to you?

Think about where you build a house, what kind of car you drive.

Do you throw out or recycle?

What kind of impact are you making on the earth?

What kind of message are you giving your children? Teach them by example.

Here are some specifics:

1. Recycle.

2. Spay/neuter your pets. The world doesn't need more homeless dogs and cats; the shelters are overflowing.

3. If you want a pet, please adopt from a shelter.

4. Use organic cleaning products [yes, that would include the 7th Generation brand - that's where they got the name!] Better yet, make your own. You'd be amazed at what you can do with vinegar and baking soda. Google it.

5. Use cloth diapers or a diaper service, not pampers. The plastic in disposable diapers takes 500 years to break down in a landfill.

6. Buy organic. Yes, organic produce may cost more, but wouldn't you rather pay the farmer instead of the hospital?

7. Ban plastic from your home; bring your own canvas bags to the supermarket. You can keep them in your car so they're always handy.

8. Don't buy "disposable" anything, but if you must, buy paper rather than plastic and plastic rather than Styrofoam, which isn't recyclable and depletes the ozone layer.

9. Don't use the dryer - dry your clothes in the sun. There's nothing like it.

10. Use phosphate-free laundry and dish soap.

11. Use hand soap that comes in bars; plastic bottles of soap are... plastic!

12. Use washable rags, not paper towels, to clean up. What better use for old clothes too stained to wear any more?

13. Buy only energy efficient appliances.

14. Plug appliances into power strips and turn them off at night. Most appliances that use electrical power are consuming electricity even when turned off.

15. Shop locally. The travel time, gas and mileage it takes for products to get to big box stores, or for you to get to that store, undermines their savings.

16. Use the train instead of flying for trips under 300 miles.

17. Let your next car be a hybrid or electric. [If you already have one, I salute you!]

18. Compost. It's a joy to watch the miracle of rotten food turned into glorious soil!

19. Fix things that break, if you can, rather than replacing them.

20. Pull weeds instead of using herbicides. Get your hands in Mother Earth. Again, there's nothing like it!

21. Use organic fertilizers.

22. Xeriscape: plant things that don't need supplemental water. That means they are native to your area and have adapted to however much rainfall you normally get.

23. Vote for candidates who commit to protecting the earth.

24. Speak up! Tell your political representatives how you feel about issues: Contact Congress, Senate, and the White House.

25. Voice your concerns to merchants about excess packaging and use of plastics.

Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments below.

Always ask: Will the decisions we make today be beneficial for our descendants?

Remember that everything we do matters. If we live our lives from that idea, we will leave the world a better place.

For a deeper understanding of this principle, watch this brilliant TED talk on " Becoming Great Ancestors." Just 16 minutes long. Make yourself a cup of tea and enjoy!

If you enjoyed this post I'd be thrilled if you'd click one of the buttons below:

" Get my FREE ebook on Daily Rituals for Sacred Living and weekly Ancient Wisdom blog posts.". I promise never, ever to sell your email address.

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What is the 7th Generation principle and why do you need to know about it?

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Whenever I mention the 7th Generation principle to most people, they think I'm talking about laundry detergent. I'm always surprised that more people don't know the origin of the term, so I felt it deserved a post of its own.

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Follow the link for further information.

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Every once in a while--and it does not happen very often -- something comes along that deserves to have a strong influence on government policy, individual behavior, and how business leaders align the pursuit of profit with their social responsibilities. I believe that two issues warrant such a designation today; and the implications are consequential.

The first is something I have written a lot about and it worries me greatly -- as an economist, a parent, and someone concerned about the most vulnerable segments of our society.

What I am referring to here is the real risk that, for the first time in nearly a century in most western countries, our children's generation may end up worse off than that of their parents. This sad state of affair is the result of a number of multi-year developments.

For too many years, our job creation engines were excessively re-oriented from competitive global markets to inwardly-oriented sectors that were taken to unsustainable levels (e.g., construction, finance, housing and retail). The result was an unbalanced and vulnerable labor force.

Our generation also overdosed on debt and credit entitlement. We got seduced by financial engineering, even believing that "finance" was the next (natural) stage of capitalistic economic development.

So we opted to de facto subsidize our financial sector. We sacrificed safety for the allure of the unquestioned efficiency of unfettered markets. And we fell in love with easy borrowed money, as opposed to earned income.

Too little genuine growth, too much debt, and a risk culture gone crazy culminated in the very messy global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath - a costly shock to society whose impact will be with us for quite a few years still.

Understandably, crisis management mindsets have dominated companies, governments, and individuals. And, as often happen, this has crowded out the important but seemingly not urgent.

For years, western societies have under- and mal-invested in education. As we slipped down global rankings, we convinced ourselves that our traditional global edge in entrepreneurship and innovation (which, thankfully, is still with us) could compensate for the failure to maintain a dynamic curriculum, engage our kids, and deliver to them an exciting and rewarding educational environment.

Not a week goes by -- indeed, not a day passes -- without a reminder of the toll that all this is having on society.

Government and market failures have fueled excessively high unemployment, unusually sluggish growth, loss of trust in key institutions, and recurrent concerns about the deficit. Absent a course correction by several western economies, we risk encumbering our children with lots of debt, structural unemployment, poor growth dynamics, a discredited financial intermediation process, and a dysfunctional political system.

It doesn't need to be like this. There are immediate steps that can -- and should -- be taken by governments to reduce the real and present danger of declining living standards.

It is about initiating proper reforms, setting sensible priorities, sticking to multi-year commitments, and nurturing a more enabling environment. And, as detailed elsewhere, effective implementation requires the trio of much faster political consensus on what ails the western economies, broad buy-in for a multi-year vision of reform, and detailed policy markers.

We should all hope that our politicians will step up to this important responsibility. But we cannot rely just on them. We also need to do more to help the next generation stand a better chance of overcoming the real threat of declining living standards - and this is even before we take into account critical sustainability issues that have to do with the multiple abuses of our environment and natural resources.

This leads to the second critical issue: how to better empower and enable our kids to take control of their destiny.

Critically, this starts with doing all we can to enhance education. You need only look at the latest monthly U. S. employment report to gasp its importance. Within the aggregate 8 percent unemployment, the rate for those with a bachelor degree is 4 percent compared to 11 percent for those that lack a high school diploma.

The prospects are even worse for those teenagers out of school. Joblessness among 16-19 year olds in the labor force is a stunning 24%. And the longer this persists, the greater the risk that this generation goes from being unemployed to unemployable. This possibility must not and should not be allowed to occur.

The implications go beyond encouraging the young to remain in school and a more effective financial commitment to the sector. Further progress is needed in evolving curriculums to ensure their relevance for today's quickly re-aligning world. And this evolution needs to be made more global, interactive and engaging, thus fueling the type of intellectual curiosity that anchors mental agility that is so helpful in today's fluid world.

Financial literacy can, and should be a larger part of our children's basic education. Unlike prior generations, they will not be able to rely on market appreciation and compensation growth to overcome the debt legacies that they will inherit. Responsive asset-liability management will be a constant requirement for them. This is a skill-set that we have not emphasized enough as part of core educational curriculum to date.

Vocational training will also need to play a more important role in preparing the next generation - thus reversing a secular decline in emphasis. And safety nets will need strengthening given the time that it takes to re-orient a labor force and overcome structural rigidities that have been allowed to get embedded in the structure of too many economies.

Clearly a focused and well-defined government policy plays an important role in all this. It is necessary to set the tone and support an enabling environment; but, critically, it is far from sufficient. Moreover, the scope and scale of government policies will be inevitably limited by the realities of tight budgets and large competing claims.

Individuals and companies need also to step up to the plate and assume greater responsibilities.

As parents, we must play a greater role in equipping our children for a more challenging future. We should also care for those members of society who are marginalized. Our wellbeing is intrinsically interconnected with theirs. If we are not all much more attentive, further disparities in wealth and income inequality will seriously tear the fabric of our society.

As citizens, we should also think twice about what we do with the older generation's domination of the ballot box. As demographics worsen, there will be a natural tendency for the electorate to try to borrow even more growth and revenues from the future, thus imposing a much higher cost on the next generation.

This natural tendency is understandable, but it can also be countered by clever design of financial responsibility and fairer burden sharing. It can also be offset by earlier and more comprehensive political awareness among the young, including through the use of social media.

Companies can also help, and do so in a matter that improves their own prospects. This goes beyond solidifying their future base of consumers and investors.

By offering more summer internships, training and entry level jobs, companies can enhance their flexibility in a cost effective manner while also providing the young with greater experience and productivity enhancers. Financial firms can and should do more than this, stepping up to the responsibility to become more effective providers of financial literacy programs.

The bottom line is simple yet important. The response to the west's challenging outlook should neither be paralysis or more of the same. Instead, we collectively need to make greater efforts to arm the next generation with the right mix of robustness and agility.

We owe this to them not just to offset the excesses of our generation - and thus the burden we have already imposed on them - but also as responsible parents, grandparents and citizens of vibrant and caring democracies.

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How to Make Sure the Next Generation Is Better Off Than We Are

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Every once in a while--and it does not happen very often -- something comes along that deserves to have a strong influence on government policy, individual behavior, and how business leaders align the pursuit of profit with their social responsibilities. I believe that two issues warrant such a designation today; and the implications are consequential.

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4: "Hey Fox News, if you don't think climate change is a threat, I dare you to interview the thousands of homeless people in Bangladesh (whose) homes were literally washed away beneath their feet due to the rising sea levels."

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4: "Hey Fox News, if you don't think climate change is a threat, I dare you to interview the thousands of homeless people in Bangladesh (whose) homes were literally washed away beneath their feet due to the rising sea levels."

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Follow the link below regarding Fox News' denial that climate change is a threat.

Now compare Fox News’ past views to an article or video you found on rising sea-levels in Bangladesh. Do you feel the author is justified in reprimanding Fox News on their views in light of the research you just conducted?

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For the past decade, Fox News has been a haven for climate change denialism, shielding viewers from the evidence that humans are causing global temperatures to rise. Perhaps no other news outlet has done as much to harden the view, among conservatives, that global warming is a fiction.

But on Thursday, just a few minutes before President Donald Trump's announcement that the United States would back out of a major international climate agreement, Fox did something startling and utterly off brand.

Viewers tuning in to watch the president's speech saw anchor Shepard Smith lecturing them that climate change was not, in fact, a hoax:

Climate change is real and our activities do contribute to it.

As the New York Times reports today, scientific studies show if the world's carbon emissions continue unchecked, atmospheric temperatures will continue to rise. The planet will not just be hotter but also suffer from rising sea levels, more powerful storms, droughts that lead to food shortages and extreme conditions.

Supporters of the accord argue it's the right thing to do for the environment, and for people - future generations.

On the matter of climate change, Smith has been one of the few dissenting voices at Fox News. In 2014, he stirred up a minor controversy when he declared, on air: "Climate change - it is real. The science is true."

Trump's Paris speech Thursday fell squarely in the middle of Smith's 3 pm show, which gave the anchor a chance to remind his conservative viewers about the scientific consensus on climate change.

Smith's forceful acknowledgement of the science is startling only in the context of Fox News, a channel that has long been blamed for perpetuating right-wing ignorance of the science on global warming. In 2011, researchers from American, George Mason, and Yale universities found that Fox News programs overwhelmingly rejected or ignored the scientific evidence on climate change, and promoted a false sense of balance by favoring guests who denied the planet was heating up.

"Notably, Fox also provided substantially more coverage on climate change than the other two networks, thereby amplifying doubt about global warming within the cable news landscape," the researchers write.

People who already doubt climate change are much more likely to watch Fox News, of course, but there's evidence that Fox News, in turn, has suppressed public recognition of global warming.

Studies have shown that many climate deniers are not incorrigible, but in fact are surprisingly open to new viewpoints. A recent experiment from Yale University researchers Sander van der Linden and Anthony Leiserowitz, and George Mason's Edward Maibach found that simply telling people "97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused global warming is happening" is enough to increase their confidence that climate change is real.

What's more, both liberals and conservatives shifted their views equally after learning this fact. Even people who were avid watchers of Fox News became more receptive to the idea of man-made global warming, suggesting that at least some climate skeptics are simply misinformed, not willfully oblivious.

Part of the problem is that the American media has done a bad job of explaining climate science. According to the survey, only a quarter of liberals and only 5 percent of conservatives were aware that more than 90 percent of climate scientists believe climate change is real and that it is caused by people. The widespread "public confusion and doubt about the state of scientific agreement has limited action on global warming for decades," the researchers argue.

As this issue becomes more and more politicized, one fear is that it will be harder to change people's minds. Over the past 20 years, Democrats have become more confident that humans are causing global warming, while Republicans have become more skeptical. This reflects, in part, how politicians and pundits have increasingly turned climate skepticism into a matter of political identity.

Making fun of liberals is now the default mode for how the conservative media covers climate change. Just this week, "Celebs Freak Over Trump's Paris Agreement Exit" was the headline of an article on the alt-right website Breitbart. And on Fox News Thursday morning, one host asked: "Why is climate change the religion of the left?"

"I think precisely because it is so meaningless," the guest replied.

These kinds of conversations avoid discussing the actual science in favor of scoring partisan points. Which makes it all the more surprising when, on occasion, a Fox News anchor does relay the facts about climate change, as Smith did Thursday. Fox News has done much over the years to perpetuate climate denialism, but if the studies are to be believed, there still may be a window for people like Smith to nudge Republicans toward accepting the reality of global warming.

Though, judging by the nasty reception Smith received on Twitter yesterday afternoon, that window may fast be closing.

"Anyone who insists that FOX is right-wing totally disregards Shepard Smith. He is a reliable lefty STOOGE," one said, shortly after Smith delivered his climate change monologue on Thursday. Someone else complained, "Holy Crud, @ShepNewsTeam went full tin foil hat at 3pm."

"Please just report the news," another added. "We don't need Shepard Smith telling us how things are."

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Fox News actually acknowledged that climate change is real

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For the past decade, Fox News has been a haven for climate change denialism, shielding viewers from the evidence that humans are causing global temperatures to rise. Perhaps no other news outlet has done as much to harden the view, among conservatives, that global warming is a fiction.

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5: "Sara Palin, you said that you love the smell of fossil fuels, well I urge you to talk to the kids of Beijing who are forced to wear pollution masks just to go to school"

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5: "Sara Palin, you said that you love the smell of fossil fuels, well I urge you to talk to the kids of Beijing who are forced to wear pollution masks just to go to school"

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In May 2011, the notorious American political figure, Sara Palin, said how she loved the smell of emissions  (fossil fuels). Clearly the comment didn’t fair well with any one concerned with the environment.

Follow the link provided and give your opinion on Sara Palin’s comments in light of the high rate of pollution in places like Beijing.

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"I love the smell of the emissions" (real quote) - Sarah Palin at the Rolling Thunder bicycle ride