We are engaged in a grand experiment: What happens if you release carbon dioxide and certain other gases into the atmosphere in larger amounts? Scientists are fairly sure of the outcome, and it is not pretty. The gases act like a greenhouse, capturing solar energy in the atmosphere, and gradually the Earth warms up. Ocean currents are altered, ocean levels rise, rainfall patterns change, storms become more intense. Glacier National Park — Montana’s million-acre reserve — will be without glaciers even before the Arctic ice cap melts, now anticipated well before the end of this century.

If we had access to a thousand planets, it might make sense to use one to conduct such an experiment. If things turned out baldly — as they almost surely will — we could move on to the next. But we don’t have that luxury. We’re stuck here on Earth.

The challenges the world confronts in coping with global warming parallel those in the other arenas of globalization: an unfair global trade regime that impedes development, an unstable global financial system that results in crisis after crisis, with poor countries repeatedly finding themselves with debt burdens beyond their ability to pay, and a global intellectual property regime which denies access to affordable lifesaving drugs, even as the AIDS epidemic ravishes so much of the developing world.

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