Year 2, Month 1, Day 5: Stop Them Before They Stop Us!

The Lewiston Sun/Times reprints an editorial from the Miami Herald, with some good words for the Environmental Protection Agency.

As we keep taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere, our planet continues to heat up. The long-term consequences of this unplanned experiment in geoengineering are likely to be disastrous for our children and their children in turn, as we face a future of disrupted seasons, wild fluctuations and ever-more-frequent “once-in-a-lifetime” weather events. Those who pay attention to the consequences of our civilization’s environmental disruption would have liked nothing better than a robust climate bill to emerge from the previous Congress — but thanks to nihilistic Republicans and timid coal-state Democrats, even the ludicrously watered-down Kerry/Lieberman effort was unable to advance. Hence it is up to the EPA. The kneejerk opposition to this agency in the newly GOP-dominated House is a three-part failure: of our politics, dominated by corporate cash; of our schools, dumbed-down and pandering to anti-science factionalism, and of our news media, whose specious false equivalence enables the claim that “the science of global warming isn’t settled.” We’re headed for a world of hurt in the coming centuries unless we get our carbon emissions under control; Republicans who seek to hamper the EPA are increasing the likelihood of disaster.

Warren Senders