Kew Royal Botanic Gardens

In the sanguine, albeit potentially unrealistic, expectation that the Paris Climate Change Conference may actually produce a legally binding treaty that will curb the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius, I decided to post a few of the pictures I took earlier this year of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. Aside from being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Kew Gardens houses over 33,000 species of plants from every country in the world. Many of these species will face extinction unless all UN member nations take serious political and economic action now. Paraphrasing Albert Camus, it is in the icy depths of winter that we must cling to the hope that there will be an invincible summer. Metaphors notwithstanding, political lassitude and inaction will ensure that this “invincible summer” may yet become the most dreaded and deadliest season of all. Let’s hope that this day never comes to pass. It is still not too late to curtail the nefarious side effects of the Industrial Revolution and accompanying deforestation of the past two hundred years. We simply cannot afford another failed Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.