The tide is changing.  Despite years of warnings from top scientists, environmentalists and even Al Gore, climate change has just recently become an above-the-fold news item, worthy of stump speeches and policy debates.  Politicians are finally paying attention to environmental activists and giving conservation policy serious consideration.

Just yesterday Center for Native Ecosystems, along with conservation organizations from across the country, petitioned seven Bush Administration Cabinet Secretaries with the intention of creating binding rules that would seriously address the threat of climate change and would implement proactive measures to protect species that are most effected by global warming. The timing of this petition could not have been more auspicious.

Today, the United Nations released a twenty-one-page report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painting a less-than-rosy future for Earth’s climate system regardless of the actions we take in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.  In response to the Panel’s conclusion that man-made causes are to blame, the Bush Administration reversed its consistent denial of the effect of carbon emissions, stating on Friday that “human activity is contributing to changes in the Earth’s climate…it is no longer up for debate.”

With the impact of this expert report making headlines around the world, and with the pro-conservation Democrats in both the House and the Senate putting pressure on the White House to address climate change in an important way, the binding rules suggested by Center for Native Ecosystems have a real chance for implementation.  This chance, in the past, would have seemed inconceivable.  The tide really is changing and if the environmental community can successfully advocate for our native critters and plants, it might mean some of the most serious and meaningful policy change since the Endangered Species Act legislation in 1973.