Twelve national parks in the West are under serious threat from climate change. That’s the message of a new report from the NRDC and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, “Losing Ground.” According to the report, the parks in 11 western states are “endangered” as a result of climate change-related phenomena including drought, decreased snowfall, and wildfire. The report says landscapes in these national parks could be “drastically altered” if nothing is done to stave off the potential impacts of global warming. (An RMCO report released last summer showed western temperatures on the rise and snowflakes in decline.)

The parks at risk according to the report include Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite, Grand Teton, and Joshua Tree. The retreat of Glacier’s glaciers is already well documented, and could, the report says, be complete by 2030. The report also mentions disturbing potential scenarios like the total disappearance of Joshua trees from the eponymous park, loss of habitat for important species like grizzlies and bighorn sheep, and the eradication of large swaths of forest from some areas in the southwest.

These changes, we’re told, are “not inevitable” – a ubiquitous refrain amidst otherwise dire-sounding predictions about global warming’s impacts, which seem to be everywhere. Recently, a paper published in the journal Nature by an international team of scientists found that a majority of plant and animal species around the world are at risk of extinction by mid-century as climate change makes their habitat uninhabitable. That study, based on climate scientists’ attempts to model how increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases will impact various regions of the planet, also made the case that reductions in CO2 emissions could spare some of those species.

But the messages you hear every day about what we can do to break the cycle can feel somewhat uninspiring. The solutions are either outside the realm of probability (like getting Americans to stop living in a car culture) or so mundane (like changing your household lightbulbs to compact fluorescents) as to do nothing to capture the imagination, despite their tangible benefits. Still, green ingenuity is running at full speed, and we should soon see a spike in zany, gee-whiz solutions will at least invigorate the dialogue. Fuel from algae that feed on industrial waste, anyone?