Statement on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Release

Bill Stanley, Director, Global Climate Change Initiative

ARLINGTON, VA— February 2, 2007— Bill Stanley, Director of The Nature Conservancy's Global Climate Change Initiative, issued the following statement following the release of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment report today:

"There's been a lot of discussion this week about some of the details included in this assessment. People are wondering how high will sea levels rise, or exactly how certain we are that human activities cause climate change -- Ninety percent? Ninety-nine percent? But the real question we should now be debating is: what are we going to do about it?

"Confidence in the projections about what will happen is increasing, and that helps us to plan. We need to know whether a coastal area that we are considering investing in is likely to be underwater in 50 years or 100 years.

"Climate change is happening. Its consequences surround us, and there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is to blame, as affirmed by this report. Reducing the carbon emissions that are causing climate change is absolutely key to our mission of protecting the diversity of life on earth.

"There are things we can do to try to mitigate those impacts, but only with the efforts of individual people and with the investment of government, private, and nonprofit partners. It is our hope that this report inspires true commitment from every level of our society. The time to act is now."

The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working to protect the most ecologically important lands and waters around the world for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.