writeaboutwarming

February 26, 2013 – The 1960s scared conservatives worse than I knew – worse than a lot of us knew, I guess.   Certainly I lived through that period.   Certainly young adults found their voices, and had the nerve to object to being put through the meat grinder called Vietnam.   Black Americans continued to seek justice and equality in their adopted homeland.   Change was inevitable.   It’s understandable that conservatives wanted a say in what those changes would be.   Their fearful reaction was – and is - badly overblown.   Others’ happiness is nothing to fear.     These longed-for changes cost conservatives nothing but their unearned, self-satisfied atrophy.   Young people went on dying, even so. It turns out all of that change scared the socks off market fundamentalists.   Determined to return the country to its previous perceived state of inertia, Lewis Powell wrote a memorandum for the US Chamber of Commerce, urging a sh...

July 9, 2012 - Have you detected a subtle shift recently, dating back to, oh say the beginning of the heat wave?  I'm talking about a shift in the way people think.  It's subtle because it is thus far unspoken.  If you could hear the sound of anxiety, however, I think this is the way it would sound.  The interesting part is, after surveying the titles of stories in the news today, I think the shift is already detectable in the pages of our newspapers and magazines.  Care for a sampling? How global warming is driving our weather wild Higher ocean acidity is climate change's "evil twin," major threat to coral reefs: NOAA chief Havoc as monsoon displaces millions Scientists back global action on reefs Relief comes for US Midwest, Northeast after heat wave Televised mainstream media isn't ready for primetime yet.  CNN's story about the last 12 months having been the warmest on record refers only to high heat and severe storms - two of the poss...

October 24, 2011 - I learned last week of a speech, delivered to the U.S. Senate by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (what a name!) of Rhode Island the week before. The speech was about climate change, of all things. The senator, a member of the Democratic party, spoke very directly and pulled no punches. Rather than describe his speech, let me quote a small portion of it to you: " ... There is a wave of very justificable economic frustration that has swept through our Capitol. The problem is that some of the special interests - the polluters - have insinuated themselves into that wave, sort of like parasites that creep into the body of a host animal, and from there they are working terrible mischief. They are propagating two big lies. One is that environmental regulations are a burden to the economy and we need to lift those burdens to spur our economic recovery. The second is [that] the jury is still out on climate changes caused by carbon pollution, so we don't need to worry abou...