Month 10, Day 22: Sticker Shock?

Business Week ran an AP story on the anticipated costs of climate change in the Gulf of Mexico over the next few decades. Trying to submit letters to print magazines is often problematic, simply because the contact information for LTEs is not easy to find. But I’m persistent. The flood/sandbag motif is new; I’m going to try and use that one more in the weeks to come.

I hope you are all planning on VOTING. For Democrats.

Looking into the future, it’s obvious to everyone but the tea-partiers and the conservative corporatists who fund them that climate change is the most significant threat humanity has ever faced. The scientific evidence is unequivocal; anthropogenic global warming is real and dangerous. Whether describing it in quanta of human misery (hundreds of millions displaced; millions of acres of cropland devastated) or in the dollars-and-cents language of the business sector, there can be no doubt that even if we act quickly, we’re in for a world of hurt. While action is going to be expensive, the short-term orientation of many in the business world leaves them unable to apprehend the costs of inaction. Those, it turns out, are orders of magnitude greater than the economic impacts of responding realistically and robustly to an imminent threat. When a flood is coming, only idiots quibble about the cost of sandbags.

Warren Senders