**UPDATE:
Stuart Pimm, the highly respected conservation biologist at Duke University, emailed me his thoughts on the climate change/global land use dichotomy that is implied by my post. It's an important perspective. Stuart has given me permission to publish his email in its entirety. You can find it below at this comment.**
Perhaps the biggest problem I have with the debate over climate change science, politics, and policy is that it's elbowed all other environmental issues off the public stage. This has to drive ecologists crazy. But it seems they're all laying low in the (invasive) weeds. I don't see any of them challenging the dominant belief that global warming is the single biggest environmental threat of the day. Note that I said, of the day. Because I agree with the notion that climate change could well wreak havoc on society and life-supporting ecosystems later in this century. However, we ...
