The positive outcome of the conference was also attributable to the success of the agenda in breaking the discussions into chewable pieces. Too often policy discussions of the greenhouse effect have foundered on a perception that the enormity of the problem makes any individual response hopelessly inadequate. This belief tends to delay formulation and implementation of incremental response and adaptation strategies while discussions focus on a "magic wand" solution. This conference instead explored practical means of limiting greenhouse gas emissions and simultaneously constructing strategies to adapt to and mitigate the adverse effects of the likely global warming.

The goal of Environmental Awareness Workshops is to commit participants to involvement in community environmental problems as an educational experience. This workshop was, therefore, designed as a model of this process. The major area of activity focused around the investigation of actual local problems, with each participant contributing to the investigation and making a commitment to share the experience with members of his/her group and with community residents afterwards. The projected result of this is that the participants would have learnt the value of acquiring, sharing, using and disseminating pertinent information to prevent or cope with similar problems when they are encountered again.

This report documents the proceedings of the second Only One Earth Forum (held at the New York Academy of Medicine 15-16 May 1987) and related activities that included:
* The Only One Earth Awards Dinner held at The New York Hilton that launched the Forum Program on 14 May 1987.

The SCOPE/UNEP International program of Studies on the Biogeochemical Cycles has four principal subjects: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Carbon and Sulphur. The study is being undertaken to find the major complex interactions between the cycles of these substances. The purpose is to demonstrate the resulting overall limits, which govern our lives and the future of mankind. The emerging climate changes caused by the greenhouse effect make it increasingly clear that our Earth is an integrated system. But environmental systems can be stretched by mankind's actions to limits at which changes in them can occur rapidly and perhaps irreversibly. It is possible that some of nature's thresholds are already being crossed.