Year 4, Month 1, Day 7: Ring-A-Ding-Ding!

The Orlando Sentinel joins the shrill chorus:

Earth is growing warmer; the records prove that. Some still doubt human activity has anything to do with it, but it’s past time for the rest of us to face reality.

We need, first, good leadership. The United States should provide it, as it has repeatedly promised but failed to do. To begin with, it needs to join those other nations that have committed to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions.

Florida should be a leader among the states, because it is among those most threatened with ecological problems and rising sea levels.

Who’s to bell the cat? Sent January 2:

As 2012 shrinks in the rearview mirror, we can recognize it as the year that climate change came home for many of us. Whether it was the devastating drought that hammered the Corn Belt, the unprecedented destruction wrought by Superstorm Sandy, or the hundreds of other examples of extreme weather, last year Americans learned that geographical serendipity is no longer going to protect us from the accelerating greenhouse effect.

But one important group of our fellow citizens remains to be convinced. Congress and elected leaders have been shamefully timid, offering platitudes and half-measures where bold and forceful action is urgently needed. Did I say “one”? Make that two: our Politicians and their Ownership. We’ll only see genuinely meaningful policy responses to the climate crisis if we get fossil fuel money out of politics, or convince Big Oil and Big Coal to value humanity’s survival more than their already grotesque profit margins.

Warren Senders