by Adam Markham and Jay Malcolm

About the authors: Adam Markham is author of A Brief History of Pollution and a former environmental consultant with the World Wildlife Fund, an international conservation organization. Jay Malcolm is a professor of forestry at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Global warming represents a rapidly worsening threat to the world’s wildlife and natural habitat. The increase of global temperatures seen in the late 20th century was unprecedented in the last 1000 years. Professor Tom Crowley of Texas A&M University predicts that in the 21st century “the warming will reach truly extraordinary levels” surpassing anything in the last 400,000 years. New World Wildlife Fund (WWF) research indicates that the speed with which global warming occurs is critically important for wildlife, and that the accelerating rates of warming we can...