Sunday, July 6, 2014

I want to believe
(with apologies to the X-Files)

About a week ago, we pondered about climate change global warming's effect on Great Lakes shipping. Today's Star Tribune has a nice article about it that more confirms than denies the concerns we wrote about.

Grand Marais Harbor on Lake Superior
Photo by J. Harrington

Back around the end of May, Greg Seitz wrote a piece on the St. Croix 360 web site noting that the future is likely to include monster algae blooms in that wild and scenic waterway.

St. Croix River in Spring
Photo by J. Harrington

Then, just today, we learned that it's not only developing nations such as Bangladesh or the Maldives that may disappear to rising seas. The Atlantic informs us that we don't have to wait for another Katrina or Rita or Sandy to lose part of our own country. And yet, and yet, we sit back and allow our Congress and our legislature to sit on their hands and our future. What's the matter with us? Do we need to spend more time watching Beasts of the Southern Wild? Does today's poem offer a partial answer to our lack of political will? Should it read "First they came for the Global Warming believers?

First they came...

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

~Martin Niemöller

Maybe we've forgotten that we're all in this together (except for the 20 or so of the "1%"ers signed up for the Virgin space flight).

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

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