Focusing on the wrong stories

As mentioned in my previous post, there are many news stories that go unreported, or receive inadequate coverage in comparison to their importance. While the “war on terror” is all the rage, guaranteed to fan the flames of fear and keep us all docile to Big Brother, a more serious threat, global warming, receives woefully inadequate coverage.

While anecdotally, many people sense that something’s seriously whacked with our weather, most prefer not to mention global warming, hoping that it will go away. Friends, let me tell you, whether our media acknowledges it and racks it according to its potential to change life as we know it, or not, we face some serious consequences unless we drastically change our behavior, before it’s too late. Burying our heads in the sand, or tilting at goblins won't cut it, either.

While I don’t qualify as a graybeard, yet (maybe salt ‘n pepper), I’ve lived long enough to know that this winter has been the strangest I’ve experienced in my 44 years on the planet. January days of 50 degree weather and shirtsleeves, people raking leaves rather than shoveling snow and meteorologists verifying that the month's temperatures have been the second-warmest on record for the northeast. Interestingly, this winter of no snow follows last year’s record breaking snowfalls on the Cape and other places. In fact, a map produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows temperatures above average all over the U.S.

Roger Harrabin, an environmental correspondent for the BBC reports that scientists will soon announce that only greenhouse gas emissions can account for the freakish weather that’s been experienced across the globe.

While our president paid lip service to alternative energy in his last state of the union address, he’s rigorously refused to accept any targets set for the reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions. Even the British, despite Prime Minister Blair’s call for new technologies, are resistant to force business to drastically reduce their CO2 output.

None of this bodes well for the long-term, war on terror, or not.