Introduction
To paraphrase a much-quoted line of Victorian-era advice from Rudyard Kipling, "...if you can keep your head when all about are losing theirs ... it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation" Many scientists would feel that this quote is appropriate to those few in their field who still doubt the seriousness of man-made climate change and its impact on the environment.
The notion of the 'tipping-point' (Lindsay and Zhang 2005) in climatic terms being reached is gaining wider scientific backing and according to a key scientific message being delivered to the general public in the UK and EU from approx. 2006 onwards, our species' future on this planet is in imminent danger. The tipping point is often described as being the position which if we go past we incur changes to the climate that cannot easily be reversed and so we will have caused permanent and lasting damage to the planet and its climatic stability.
This raises issues of 'inter-generational equity' (den Elzen et al. 1992) - have we really got the right to use up the planet's resources in this generation and in doing so pollute the planet to such an extent that all generations that follow will be seriously hindered and left with a non-stable climate? This is another fundamental concept to consider within the context of studying the global environment. It is somewhat of a moral issue, but an important one to science nevertheless.
The slogan 'Think Global Act Local' increasingly seems to be a message for our times and is normally associated with the recognition that everyone has a responsibility to 'do their bit' for the global environment, whether it be recycling, purchasing fair trade organic goods, using the car less, turning down the central heating by 1-2oC.
So if we have a sense of responsibility and are determined to stop ourselves rolling on through the tipping point and using up all the resources of all future generations to come, then we must think about the global environment in our daily lives and so act locally to help address the broader challenges facing our planet. Successive UK prime ministers have labelled addressing climate change as the greatest challenge of the 21st century and of our time (Brown 2009).