Some time ago, a scientist went on his biannual tour of the Russian Arctic Ocean, checking for noxious plumes of methane gas bubbling up from the ocean. He'd previously seen hundreds of these plumes, about a metre wide each, emitting gas 50 times more damaging to our climate than carbon dioxide. This time, as he came across the first plume, he couldn't believe it. It was a KILOMETRE wide. A vast column of gas entering our atmosphere. He sailed on and found another a kilometre wide, and another, and another. Hundreds of them.

This could be what the experts warned us about. As the earth warms, it creates many "tipping points" that accelerate the warming out of control. Warming thaws the Arctic sea ice, destroying the giant white 'mirror' that reflects heat back into space, which massively heats up the ocean, and melts more ice, and so on. We spin out of control. In 2014 everything was off the charts -- it was the hottest year in recorded history.

We CAN stop this, if we act very fast, and all together. And out of this extinction nightmare, we can pull one of the most inspiring futures for our children and grandchildren. A clean, green future in balance with the earth that gave birth to us.

We have just 5 months left until the Paris Summit, the meeting that can determine the fate of the world’s efforts to fight climate change. It might seem like a long time -- it's not. We have 5 months to get our leaders to that meeting, give them a plan, and hold them accountable. It's us vs. the oil companies and fatalism.

We can win, we must, but we need to throw everything we have at December's summit. With pledges of just a few dollars/euros/pounds we'll be able to massively scale up our work -- we'll only process the donations if we hit our goal. For the world we dream of, let's make it happen.

Give what you can. We'll process your donation only if we reach our goal of 10,000 new supporters.

Ricken Patel, Avaaz Executive Director