Becky and I have been planning on climbing Mount Kilimanjaro sometime in the next three years. In this morning's Globe and Mail I found out it no longer is a snow capped peak. The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are gone. They won't be back. At least not in our lifetime.

I'm not a tree hugger, at least in the sense that I would never chain myself to a tree in front of a machine that would turn me into mulch, but I think I may have to become a little more than just passively concerned about our planet.

Mountain glaciers are excellent litmus tests for global warming. While hiking in British Columbia a year and a half ago glaciers were a huge part of the scenery. It's sad to see them melt away.

If you think that the snows of Kilimanjaro have been slowly melting away for the past 1000 years, please think again. These two images, the first taken in 1993, the second in 2000, show how fast the snows have receeded.