Imagine a world in the near future where just stepping outside your front door could be a risk-taking venture unless proper clothes and sprays were worn and where cabin fever was an ailment more common than the cold. Picture hearing on the news that the North Pole was renamed the North Pool.

While such a world may seem far-fetched, it may seen be a reality. Climate change is in full effect with ice sheets drastically melting, sea levels rising, temperatures increasing, the ozone layer widening, droughts and wildfires omnipresent, and infectious diseases spreading.

Global warming exists and will profoundly affect us in the near future, yet we are merely paying lip service to an issue that will not just go away, but will grow in severity if immediate action is not taken. We are living in an era of instant gratification, where long range planning is about tomorrow.

This issue recently made headlines and exemplifies posturing with President George W. Bush reneging on his campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions, one major cause in warming. While he publicly acknowledges global warming to be a problem, this recent action demonstrates an unwillingness to take meaningful steps. Many took Bush's pledge to lead by being a "compassionate conservative" to be a codeword to represent a new change in the direction of the GOP to embrace a more moderate positions on issues; this recent action casts much doubt on whether that applies to the environment.

Time is of the essence with combating global warming. The Shanghai report that came out of a conference of scientists from 99 nations in January 2001 emphatically warned of an increase in climate change by 10.5 degrees over the next century. Such a rise is drastic; the earth's temperature has risen only about nine degrees since the last ice age! There are recent alarming predictions that, due to global warming, the snows of Mount Kilmanjaro, at the highest peak in Africa, will disappear within 15 years. Climate change, unlike weather, is much easier and accurate to forecast since it accounts for change over a stable period of time where signs accumulate gradually; weather is more unpredictable, being daily based.

Accepting global warming as real has finally become a somewhat universal opinion within the United States, yet this along has taken many years. It was only recently that major oil companies and other polluting industries dissented from anti-global warming lobbies and reformed practices. Many of these big businesses have undertaken leadership roles and formed partnerships with environmental groups to find economically and environmentally efficient means to be profitable.

The Clinton administration tried to negotiate a global warming treaty at The Hague, this past November, where the framework for an international treaty was established three years earlier at the Kyoto Climate Conference in Japan. The Kyoto Protocol (international treaty) called for all industrialized countries to reduce their emissions by an average of 5.2 percent with the help of many innovative flexible mechanisms. These were internationally oriented, designed to ensure those opposed to this treaty that changing to cleaner sources of energy would not lead to domestic economic disruption.

A The Hague, many European Union countries opposed implementation of this Kyoto Protocol, suspecting that the US would evade real emission reductions by solely relying upon these supplementary flexible solutions to meet targeted reduction level. Regardless of the motives, the US had in pushing this treaty, the fact remains that as of now, all actions to curb emission reductions are on a voluntary basis. This is not good enough when dealing with a situation of such an extreme magnitude with life threatening consequences.

There is certainly enough blame to go around starting with the US Congress for their failure to unanimously agree to ratify a global warming treaty and the media who hardly mention climate change unless it is absolutely forced onto the agenda. Those big businesses (oil companies) that fear economic loss by changing to cleaner practices have in culpability.

The US, the most technologically and industrialized country in the world, cannot lead other countries with domestic emission reductions or convert to solar and other renewable energies when there is solid resistance. The array of groups at fault must learn to unit in the name of responsibility rather than around self-interest. This is a prerequisite to any effective remedy sought to meliorate the problem of climate change.

We must stop living in the moment and face up to our responsibilities of unborn generations, as well as those who have a lot mor4e living to do on this planet. Our grandchildren deserve a life where they can enjoy the pleasures of nature - where they can have picnics with their friends and play softball or fish on a nice spring day.

They should have a life of options, not one where they are confined to virtual reality programs to experience the outdoors. To deny them this life we now lead would be an ultimate travesty of humanity. The clock is ticking away.

Ed. Note: A graduate of North High, Tara Brenner, is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania. She is studying political science and spent last semester in Washington, DC interning in the White House in the Office of Environmental Initiatives under the Deputy Assistant to the President on the Environment.