Let’s face it, when we turn on the tap, we want to get clean water every time, not something that looks like a cross between green tea yogurt and coffee sludge. When we flick the switch, we want power for our lights, video games, and TVs. When we turn the key in the ignition, we expect the car to roar to life. We’re locked into so many systems to live our busy lives. It’s like we live in a big machine made up of a zillion parts, and they all have to work together or the machine will break down or, worse yet, grind to a complete halt. We depend on our green machine, the environment for so much more than the conveniences we take for granted; we don’t seem to truly appreciate that our earth’s health and our own health are completely connected. When the earth gets sick, we get sick too.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of evidence that our green machine is breaking down and that the earth is getting sicker. Each year seems to bring on more dramatic natural events—surpassing all previous records. A heat wave in Europe in the summer of 2003 killed thirty-five thousand people. The December 26, 2004, tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed more than three hundred thousand people. Hurricane Katrina was seven times more destructive than any other natural storm in our history, and killed more than eighteen hundred people. The Southern California wildfires of October 2007 forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes—making it the largest evacuation in California history.

The planet seems to be running a fever, too. The year 2005 was the warmest year in recorded history—until 2006, which became the warmest year on record—until 2007, which quickly surpassed 2006 as of April, and then continued throughout December as the warmest year on record.

Maybe you’re thinking, Hey, that’s okay. I like warm weather, so what’s the problem? Those higher temperatures are causing animal and plant extinctions; failed crops; lower water tables; drying wells, creeks, and rivers; disappearing lakes; a decrease in snowpack and glaciers worldwide; and longer, scarier fire seasons.

It’s a big world, but we’re using it up. Georgia had such a severe water shortage in the fall of 2007 that the governor led a prayer vigil for rain. (Our Native-American friends weren’t at all surprised when the state got rain the next day.) In fact, water shortages are an international crisis. We’re destroying our rain forests so quickly that if we don’t do something fast, by 2030 there will be only 10 percent of them left. Even the skies over our heads are disappearing with the depletion of the ozone layer. What’s the deal here?

With all the evidence that our green machine is breaking down, is it too late to fix it? It’s easy to think that all our global problems are so big that there’s no solution, so why even bother to do anything? We’ll tell you why: because people are identifying what’s causing the problems, they are finding solutions, the solutions are working, and individuals like you do make a difference.

The key here is that we all need to think big—be part of a large national or international effort—and think small—act more thoughtfully and locally as individual teens. One person can and does make a difference—but think of how much more powerful and effective we’ll be when we pull together! It all starts with understanding how, why, and where the green machine is breaking down.

This chapter will give you the basic lowdown on some of the most important issues affecting our planet, followed by a sampling of the kinds of innovative solutions people are employing to fix these problems. We think that if you have the inside scoop on what’s going wrong and what it’ll take to turn it around, you’ll be more pumped about trying some of the suggestions to come. If you want to delve even deeper into any of these topics, we’ve listed some of our favorite books in the Resources section at the back of this book.