Year 4, Month 1, Day 18: The Very Rich Are Different From You And Me

The Delaware News-Journal discusses the hot-off-the-presses National Climate Assessment:

A new national report flatly declared Friday that global climate change “is already affecting the American people” – making seasons hotter and drier, whipping up more furious storms and floods and threatening global ecosystems and every aspect of human activity.

“Evidence for climate change abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” said the draft National Climate Assessment, which is issued every four years.

In an opening to the 1,146-page document, described as “A letter to the American People,” the report’s lead officials said: “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” with evidence to be found in hotter seasons, increased wildfires, and retreating sea ice.

“Americans are noticing changes all around them,” the report said. “Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.”

I was tired of excoriating the media, so I excoriated fossil fuel corporations instead. Sent January 12:

The newly released National Climate Assessment is a sobering read, confirming once again that the consequences of a century-long fossil-fuel binge are already clobbering America and the world, with more heavy blows yet to come. And yet this document will probably land in Congress’ to-be-ignored pile, along with the scores of other such reports on climate change and its effects. Our representatives apparently have more important things to do than address the potential for natural disasters that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars by the decade’s end.

What possible rationale would justify our elected officials’ egregious abdication of responsibility to their constituents? The answer’s a simple one: our lawmakers are no longer beholden to us citizens, but to the oil and coal industries, whose eagerness to co-opt our governance for sake of increased profits is a tragic demonstration that great economic power has a negative correlation with civic virtue.

Warren Senders