The best evidence for global warming is a warmer globe.
Take the last week here in Atlanta. Please. Each day hotter than the one before, until the daytime high reached 103 degrees. Hardly a cloud in the sky.
We expect a high of 92 today, thanks to some morning clouds, but the only way I could get in a simple Sunday bike ride was to leave practically before sun-up, around 6:30. (It also felt good to be finished and showered by 9:30, but that’s another story I’ll tell another time.)
Fact is that over the last few years weather patterns have gotten more than passing strange. Weather systems no longer travel west-to-east across the U.S. as they once did. Now they seem to go south-to-north, which is why Texas and Oklahoma got soaked this summer while Alabama and Georgia had record drought.
This lack of steering currents is also behind our "benign" hurricane season. The only storms I’ve seen have exhibited the same pattern as the Texas rain — they go south to north, and don’t head in toward the west like bowling balls looking to strike the dangling 10 pin called Florida.
What is happening, in fact, is that the damage from global warming seems to have become irreversible. The Arctic ice sheet is breaking up far more rapidly than supposed, because the dark water left by the ice is accelerating the melt. We won’t know for some time what "normal" weather looks like, anywhere on the globe. And there’s no longer anything we can do to stop it.
We can only hope to contain it.
So why, on my way home the other day, did I see some joker in an
SUV, at a gas station parking lot, running his engine full blast,
running his air conditioner full blast, and keeping the window halfway
open so he could hang a cigarette out of it?
Until we’re willing to get mad at people like that, and do something to prevent that kind of behavior, we don’t stand a chance.
Your children are dieing and this joker is laughing at you.
That gas needs to cost that guy so much that he cannot afford to do that. (Come to think of it, the cigarettes probably should too!)
Only from the top down can this problem be licked. We need a president who is absolutely dedicated to solving the problem here and globally using all tools available.
Only when the incentives at the top are corrected, when the fossil fuel industry is no longer propped up by our government’s policies (preferencing roads and big cars, fighting wars of aggression to secure more oil, subsidizing development of new coal technologies), when reckless manufacturing practices abroad are no longer rewarded with standardless “free trade,” only when these problems are tackled in a big way is it even remotely possible to reverse the damage already done.
Run, Al, Run! No other person currently seeking office is going to make this a priority, or has the knowledge base and clout to generate the kind of solutions and achieve the widespread international buy-in required.
(Not to diminish the importance of individual action. Not only do we each need to do everything within our power to reduce our own emissions and stop being so wasteful and environmentally careless, but we do need to be willing to raise the topic with others.)
That gas needs to cost that guy so much that he cannot afford to do that. (Come to think of it, the cigarettes probably should too!)
Only from the top down can this problem be licked. We need a president who is absolutely dedicated to solving the problem here and globally using all tools available.
Only when the incentives at the top are corrected, when the fossil fuel industry is no longer propped up by our government’s policies (preferencing roads and big cars, fighting wars of aggression to secure more oil, subsidizing development of new coal technologies), when reckless manufacturing practices abroad are no longer rewarded with standardless “free trade,” only when these problems are tackled in a big way is it even remotely possible to reverse the damage already done.
Run, Al, Run! No other person currently seeking office is going to make this a priority, or has the knowledge base and clout to generate the kind of solutions and achieve the widespread international buy-in required.
(Not to diminish the importance of individual action. Not only do we each need to do everything within our power to reduce our own emissions and stop being so wasteful and environmentally careless, but we do need to be willing to raise the topic with others.)
It is a political problem.
The US has a history of individualism. Libertarian inclined folk tend to say ‘If he can afford it, good luck to him. He can spend his money any way he likes’. This leads to the tragedy of the commons, where the air we breath and the climate we live in may be ruined because there is no ‘chargeback’ to each individual for the damage they cause.
As Moze says, quadrupling the cost of gas and energy would make people more resource conscious and reduce waste. But the effect on poor people would be severe. Europe gets round this by a labyrinthine system of poor people claiming benefits for food and energy.
In the US, a preferable system politically might be to get laws that say ‘Don’t do it!’. But how to draft such laws and get them passed might be an impossible task. Until the pollution problem becomes so bad that the people demand that ‘something must be done!’.
It is a political problem.
The US has a history of individualism. Libertarian inclined folk tend to say ‘If he can afford it, good luck to him. He can spend his money any way he likes’. This leads to the tragedy of the commons, where the air we breath and the climate we live in may be ruined because there is no ‘chargeback’ to each individual for the damage they cause.
As Moze says, quadrupling the cost of gas and energy would make people more resource conscious and reduce waste. But the effect on poor people would be severe. Europe gets round this by a labyrinthine system of poor people claiming benefits for food and energy.
In the US, a preferable system politically might be to get laws that say ‘Don’t do it!’. But how to draft such laws and get them passed might be an impossible task. Until the pollution problem becomes so bad that the people demand that ‘something must be done!’.