The Associated Press:

Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.

As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.

And it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month's climate summit in Copenhagen:

• The world's oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.
• Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.
• Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.
• Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.

Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn't forecast results quite this bad so fast.

The USA Today editorial board goes on the record in support of cap-and-trade legislation and bold action to combat climate change:

Reasonable people can disagree about how bad global warming will eventually be if nothing is done, and some of the doomsday scenarios might well be overblown. But virtually all climate scientists concur that it's a dire enough threat that the wise course of action is to sharply curb use of carbon-based fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

Ideally, that would happen without raising costs to consumers or causing some job loss, but that's a little like saying it would be nice to go to heaven without doing what's necessary to get there. Solar, wind, nuclear and virtually all lower-emission energy alternatives will cost more, at least initially. The only sure way to move from traditional fuels to a greener mix anytime soon is to begin making it more expensive to continue on the current path and let the market work out the most effective way to do it...Read more

This week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, comprehensive legislation to stave off catastrophic global warming by investing in clean energy. This environment committee proposal, in concert with the renewable energy bill drafted by the energy committee, represents the Senate version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the green economy legislation passed by the House of Representatives this June.

• Read an overview of the bill.
• Read a summary of the bill.
• Read a section by section summary of the bill.
• Read the press release announcing the introduction of the bill.
• Read a description of the Pollution Reduction and Investment mechanism in the bill.
• Read endorsements by business, political, and religious leaders
• Read the full bill text.

For more information, visit Climate Progress and The Wonk Room.