Year 3, Month 5, Day 4: Would You Like An “N” With Your BLT?

The Washington Post notices:

IN AN INTERVIEW that Rolling Stone published Wednesday, President Obama said that he thinks climate change will be a big issue in the coming election and that he will be “very clear” about his “belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way.”

Maybe they should stop publishing George Will? Sent April 25:

President Obama’s recent willingness to engage with the reality of climate change is welcome news for everyone, even science-rejecting denialists who vociferously decry policy any initiative smacking of environmental responsibility. The accelerating greenhouse effect has undoubtedly been a factor in the sudden proliferation of extreme weather reported everywhere around the globe during the past year, and this has surely been a factor in the public’s changing attitudes toward the problems of global heating — and in the President’s new tone on climate.

Why has it taken so long? The President seems by nature to be a careful incrementalist: the sort of chief executive who’d have recoiled from hasty actions like the previous administration’s rush to unnecessary war. That’s all well and good, but perhaps as America prepares for a long, hot summer full of breaking weather records, he, and we, will decide that the time for careful incrementalism is over.

Warren Senders