The time to address climate change is now

[Mass]

I just feel sorry that so many Democrats think climate change is a dirty word. Thank you to Senator Kerry to continue this fight.

http://www.heraldnews.com/newsnow/x425609404/GUEST-OPINION-The-time-to-address-climate-change-is-now

Twenty years ago, Republican President George Herbert Walker Bush gathered the nations of the world in Rio to confront the challenge of global climate change. Two decades later, the challenge is more real, and the damage of climate change more pervasive, but we are further behind than ever in addressing the issue. With each passing day, the danger and the urgency only grow.
Promises of action from both political parties have been replaced by a conspiracy of silence.
Conventional wisdom tells us that the chances of Congress acting on this issue is rapidly approaching zero. How dramatic and sad that twenty years later, as nations gather for a second time in Rio, we have failed to prove the conventional wisdom wrong.
Thomas Paine described today’s situation well. As America fought for its independence, he said: “It is an affront to treat falsehood with complacence.” Yet when it comes to the challenge of climate change, the falsehood of today’s naysayers is only matched by the complacency of our political system.
In the United States, a calculated campaign of disinformation has steadily beaten back the momentum for action on climate change. Proponents have cowered in the face of millions of dollars of phony, contrived ‘talking points,’ illogical and wholly unscientific propositions and a general scorn for the truth wrapped in false threats about job loss and tax increases.


Read more: http://www.heraldnews.com/newsnow/x425609404/GUEST-OPINION-The-time-to-address-climate-change-is-now#ixzz1zqSHRnJG

[karynnj]

1. Like you I am glad that Kerry continues to make it an issue - even when it is completely not a

popular issue.

Years ago, I looked at the polling on the tradeoff between doing things for the environment versus favoring doing what could be done to pump up the economy. Ignoring that one thing I liked best of Kerry's 2004 (and to this day) positions is that there does not have to be a tradeoff and in fact, it was possible that doing what was needed could actually HELP the economy, many many people see this as a tradeoff - which is why it was polled. What was obvious in the polling was that as the economy worsened, the willingness to put any resources to helping the environment became very low.

It is idiotic when the weather in the last two years has been volatile and unlike what used to be the norm, that more Congressmen and Senators do NOT consider the long term good - but fear of not being re elected as the motivator for many to not want to do anything. I had been surprised how many Democrats, including many DU favorites, fought Kerry in 2009/2010 on a bill to deal with it.

[ladym55]

2. Let's see

Where to begin?

Wild fires in Colorado
Drought affecting more than 2/3rds of the nation
Heat records falling daily
A freak storm leaving chaos in its wake from Chicago to DC

And what did I hear? 4% of M$M mentioned climate change in relation to these "weather disaster" stories.

I made the mistake of reading the comments following JK's editorial. I have no idea any more of how to fight willfully stupid.

In North Carolina, the Republican legislature has made it illegal to talk about rising ocean levels. I guess if you don't talk about it, the Outer Banks will be JUST FINE.

a calculated campaign of disinformation has steadily beaten back the momentum for action on climate change.

Yep. When will the folks funding the disinformation "get" that we are ALL in this together? I share the Senator's frustration on this. Every time we have freak cold or a freak snowstorm, I hear, "Huh. Like I'm supposed to believe in global warming." I always pollitely respond that the appropriate term SHOULD be global "weirding" because climate change results in all sorts of weather extremes.

[Inuca]

6. Depressing :-(

And speaking of climate, this morning was the first time in probably 2 weeks (I lost track...) that I was able to turn the AC off and open the windows. Actual air "tastes" so good! And it will be the first time in a long time that the temperatures will not be somewhere around 100, +/- a few degrees. The (uncut) grasses at the back of my house look like it's the end of August, after a long, hot and dry summer. My farmer neighbor calles some 10 days ago or so asking for permission to come and get water from our very large pond (more like a small lake actually, very nice for his cattle, his own small pond had gone dry. I drive through corn fields, most of them look miserable and thirsty. Just a slice of "it's just summer, therefore it's hot" from the heartland (IL, an hour or so east of St. Louis, that I think was one of the hottest spots).

[limpyhobbler]

3. The time to address it was probably 25 years ago.

Better late that never.

Good for Senator Kerry for bringing it up.

[Mass]

4. Well, he has been trying to address it for about 25 years now.

Sadly, too few people (including Democrats in the House and Senate) want to talk about it.

[limpyhobbler]

5. Yeah,

I didn't mean it as a poke at Senator Kerry. Just at the whole failure to address the issue, and a little bit at the newspaper editor who wrote the headline for the Senator's op-ed. Strictly speaking it was correct. It's not like we can build a time machine and go back to 1981 to fix global warming. Kerry is a good chap.