Category Archives: Climate

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Here, in the 18th year of the New Millennium, the 28th Year of Our Internet (delivering unlimited information to all), and the 30th year of the Great Harangue over Climate Change (dating it from James Hansen’s testimony to the Senate), this is where we are: Continue reading →

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A bloodthirsty army of gang members and terrorists, some as young as two years old, brandishes its armaments as it marches toward confrontation with US forces at the Alamo.

A significant part of the population of the United States is alarmed about what it thinks is an enemy army approaching our southern border — a collection of rapists, MS-13 gang members, middle eastern terrorists and zombies intent on forcing their way into the country in order to destroy our society and culture. One of our citizens became so anxious about this invasion, which, he had it on good authority, was being financed by Jews, that on Saturday he went into a synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people.

The information about the content and intentions of this caravan, as it is being called, first came to public attention almost exclusively through fulminations on Fox News and subsequent tweets from the Tweeter in Chief of the United States. (Except the part about the zombies, I made that up. But there are still a few days until the midterm elections. Watch that space.) The entire FoxTrump Tango has been a pathetically transparent attempt to scare the bejesus out of American voters so they will gallop out and vote for the wall, or whatever. Continue reading →

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There may have been a time when it was appropriate to look on the sunny side of things. But it’s not now.

There’s a dumb old joke about an optimist who falls off a 40-storey building and is heard saying, as he passes the 20th floor, “Well, nothing bad has happened yet.” We have met the optimist, and he is us.

The optimist is, for example, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Policy, which this week issued a report to a world that has not yet begun to implement the agreed-upon changes needed to hold global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Two years after that target was set by 195 nations, after years of negotiations, at the Paris climate agreement, the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, the primary drivers of climate change, are still rising. There is no hope of limiting climate change to two degrees. But it would be so much nicer, says the IPCC now, to hold the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In other words: I started trying to lose 40 pounds a year ago, I haven’t lost any weight at all, so now I’ve decided to try to lose 50 pounds. Continue reading →

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Breaking News: No one in their right mind should be out in this weather. Back to you.

The minute the sun peeked out from behind the clouds of Hurricane Florence, the squadrons of idiots who had been standing out in the rain and leaning into the wind in front of television cameras, shoulder to shoulder along the entire Carolina coast, trooped inside and went back to emoting about tweetstorms. (I suppose they are smart enough, really, but my father’s definition of an idiot was someone who did not have the sense to come in out of the rain.) Florence faded from our screens and minds, over and done with, forgotten along with last year’s Harvey, Irma and Maria, along with Matthew from 2017 and all the others.

Forgotten, that is,  by all of us whose experience of Florence was vicarious, but not by those whose homes are gone, or soaked to the rafters in foul brown water, not by those whose businesses have been destroyed for the second time in two years (remember Matthew?) or by those whose relatives or friends are gone forever. Not by those who will spend the next several years of their lives living in shelters, filling out forms, trying to get back just to where they were last week. Continue reading →

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To look at a map of the high temperatures recorded on July 21, 2018, is to get the impression that the world is on fire. The funny thing is, it is.

A wise old book editor taught me years ago that every long story needs, occasionally, what he called a “tour of the horizon” — a pause in the narrative during which the narrator reviews what is going on offstage, as it were, to make sure the reader keeps in mind the context of what is happening on stage, as it were. Let’s do it. Let’s put ourselves in the middle of America, and do a tour of the horizon.  Continue reading →

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If you find yourself in a room with one of these dudes, ignoring him may not be the best option. (Photo by meldoraley46/pixabay)

It’s getting harder and harder to talk to you about how great the stock market is doing and how unemployment is a thing of the past (especially among black people), and how America is almost energy independent — because I can’t see you around all these damn gorillas in the room. Each one weighs 800 pounds, and every time I think of another way America is doing great, another gorilla comes in and sits down. And we don’t talk about them. We certainly don’t Tweet about them. You’d almost think they weren’t really there.

Here’s a recent arrival — from Iran. We’ve all been talking about Iran lately, since people there  started taking to the streets in protest last month. We’ve been talking about how they’re tired of their government and their religion and their leaders, and how they love democracy, and want to be more like us. Which is awkward, because our Twitterer-in-Chief seems to want to go to war with them. Continue reading →

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The state of Louisiana is planning to abandon settlements such as this one, Leeville, as rising seas submerge the coastal plain.

While the President of the United States makes ignorant jokes about climate change — in which he does not believe — one of the United States is preparing to abandon a chunk of land the size of the state of Delaware to rising sea waters, an effect of climate change. The state of Louisiana is preparing to abandon its entire coastal plain to the sea, to forbid new building there and to buy out and move tens of thousands of people who are at risk. Any people or businesses stubborn enough to stay would be taxed heavily, and required to post a bond to pay for the eventual demolition of their property.

We must keep in mind that this is a draft plan, that will have to survive a tsunami of opposition in order to take on the force of law. We must keep in mind that governments have tried before to do the right thing, without effect. Why, even the Congress of these United States, not long ago, actually began to fix the National Flood Insurance Program so it would make sense [“Wait, What? Congress Fixed Flood Insurance?”], but that’s just a misty memory now. Continue reading →