I see little evidence our population has any idea how pressing and dangerous global warming is or how urgent our efforts to arrest and hopefully reverse climate change must be. We must — all of us must — wake up and take personal and societal actions as humans have never done before.

World climate is on the brink of rapid and destructive change. The earth has been both warmer and colder in the past but the changes took tens of thousands of years. Not a human lifetime. Plants and animals had countless generations to adapt. We human animals have caused the coming catastrophe. We humans must stop it and stop it with nature-defying haste.

Failure to take every possible climate action will force billions living in mid-latitudes to starve, die of heat, or move. They will not starve and die quietly. They will move, resulting in destruction of countless species, we humans among them. Of those first forced to move, three nations already have nuclear bombs, a fourth soon to follow. In the chaos of global warming, dictators will come to control those bombs and war will finish us off even before warming fries the rest of the world. Our children and grandchildren will die suffering. Not some long distant future generation of strangers, our children and our grandchildren. We, each and everyone, must do a part in reducing global warming.

Most will have to buy into large efforts; effectively providing their small capital or labor and eventually owing their small piece of energy production.

For my part I am working to convert my single-family home to solar power and eventually add wind power. I am a mechanical engineer and understand this can be done at many levels of complexity, sophistication and expense. Retired and on a fixed modest income I will begin with solar panels on my south-facing roof.

This will initially be backed up by an exterior ground-mounted heat exchanger, the current model of which will deliver about twice the electrical energy it consumes. Eventually, as expense and local geology permit, I hope to add geothermal heat, which should be ample on my five acre property.

Vastly simpler and more appropriate for most homeowners and businesses will be to buy into large solar and geoheat programs. The dire speculative warnings of a world covered with ugly solar farms are overblown. Yes, there are some eyesore solar farms in my town of West Gardiner. Simply zone new ones back from the main streets and make them multiuse; for example, chicken coops or secure storage. Done thoughtfully and modestly, they could be far more financially rewarding than panels alone.

Throughout human history we have adapted to technological changes and gradually made those adaptations aesthetically and functionally acceptable. Initial waves of new technology are rarely pretty.

The calm and silence I observe about global warming has been mirrored by apparently little or no expectation of the employment boom protecting the environment will require. Industry alone will not be able to do all that is urgent and necessary. All our homes, businesses and institutions must get off fossil fuels or we humans will become the fossils.

Contradictory as it seems, we must build, build, build if we are to save this climate and ourselves. We humans have put our world at the brink of disaster in a mere four generations. We have less than one generation to save ourselves. That saving will come with massive employment opportunities and a cleaner world for future generations. We would be foolish and self destructive not to pour all we have into saving ourselves.

I listened on a recent National Public Radio report to a scientist talk calmly about global warming and the differences 1 or 2 degrees would make. I was astonished that an otherwise intelligent fellow could even imagine himself safe at such minuscule margins.

All the world’s populations must participate. We Americans will be most guilty if we continue our failure to act and save our only world. We have the technology and resources needed to adapt. We must make change possible and affordable for all peoples.