There is not enough space in my column to provide readers with a wholly accurate and encompassing view of climate change, so I implore those of you interested in saving our planet to read the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is available on the panel’s website.

Here’s what I can tell you: Climate change is here, and it’s real. The effects already can be seen worldwide, and scientists at the IPCC saw them coming as early as 1990.

In that now-decades-old report, researchers predicted continents would warm faster than oceans, with the most significant rise in temperatures in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. As a population that lives fairly far north, climate change should be a notably salient issue for us. But it’s not.

A Yale report called “Climate Change in the American Mind” found almost 40 percent of the American population doesn’t believe in global warming. How that can be possible, when there is nearly 100-percent consensus among scientists that climate change is very real, is both baffling and a stark reminder of our poor information literacy.

In fact, we often hear of developing nations being the culprits behind big emissions and being responsible for climate change, but that’s laughable. I know I often take a hard-lined approach to foreign policy with countries like China, but part of being patriotic is the ability to recognize problems at home.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2008 recognized China as being responsible for 23 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the U.S. in second place at 19 percent. While the gap has widened since then, it should be noted that China’s population is more than three times higher than that of the U.S., and those figures reflect only the current geopolitical situation – not the past, when industrialized giants like Britain and the U.S. contributed significantly more to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than anybody else.

And yet, even in the highest levels of government, some are still blind to our own contributions to this deadly climate cocktail.

Todd D. Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change delivered a speech at the Royal Institute of National Affairs titled “Delivering Concrete Climate Change Action: Towards 2015,” in which he said, “it is unwarranted to assign blame to developed countries for emissions before the point at which people realized that those emissions caused harm to the climate system.”

That’s right: Our own special envoy’s defense of American contributions to climate change is that we didn’t know we were doing it. Not even so much as an, “Oops, sorry!”

Furthermore, at the same time he denies responsibility for a now global problem, he praises paltry efforts to contain it. According to Mr. Stern, the U.S. has increased its contributions to other countries working on developing clean energy by a factor of six since 2010, totaling $2.5 billion dollars.

That’s not even a yearly figure. A legislative report available on whitehouse.gov shows international aid for climate change purposes has been steadily decreasing, with $951 million dispersed in 2012 and only $797 million the next year. That sounds like a lot until you remember the U.S. defense budget is more than $600 billion.

Yes, that’s billion, with a ‘B.’

You might say, “But Bryan, those budgets have nothing to do with each other and thus aren’t comparable!” If you were to say that, you’d be wrong. Climate change spurs global conflict just as any other geopolitical issue, but as the effects of global warming worsen, so too will the stability of our world.

As was reported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), one of the world’s most renowned think tanks, the United Nations Environment Programme assessment report on the 2007 Sudan conflict “identified climate change (including deforestation and desertification, etc.) as a major cause of the conflict.”

As our fresh water reserves become more salinized, glaciers melt, and more areas become un-inhabitable due to rising sea levels or temperatures, conflict will be even more exacerbated. Agriculture will be negatively impacted, which means those in already impoverished and desperate nations will have all the more reason to be at each other’s throats.

NASA has concluded that climate change will result in anywhere from a 5 to 20 percent decrease in crop yield from rain-fed agriculture in the U.S. alone if we continue along our current trajectory. In Africa, the situation is even grimmer with a possible 50 percent reduction in rain-fed agriculture by 2020.

A continent recognized as being highly impoverished, with many countries in dire need of aid as it is, could have its access to home-grown foods cut in half in the next 5 years. Think about that for a second, and try to tell me it’s not a chilling reality.

On a final note, SIPRI has outlined a DARA report, finding that a quarter million already die on an annual basis from hunger caused solely by climate change. That could increase to nearly half a million if we continue to stand idly by.

I cannot stress enough how important it is that this nation does more to contain climate change or attempt to reverse it. It’s no longer a matter of running out of time – the hourglass is empty. Climate change is here, and it is already devastating.

Please, to every living being from A to Z, recognize the peril we together face. We must put aside ideological and political differences, conflicts of race and religion and all other petty disputes if there is to be a next generation. Today, hand in hand, we must take action and move forward for a better tomorrow.