We Broke the Weather!

I'm staring out my window at gusting sheets of horizontal rain. It's cold. The sky is white. And give or take some precipitory drama, it's been like this for more than a month. What day is it? Yep, July 2nd. It's happened, we done did it, we broke the weather.

Last week's New Yorker had a wonderful profile of NASA scientist slash climate activist James Hansen, who has accuately predicted global warming for three decades. It's happening, folks--each year is warmer than the last. And I predict that in the face of November-Julys like this one we will quickly phase out the term "global warming." Because this is Climate Change City, sweetheart.

Obi-wan, I mean Obama, you're our only hope. We need to pass some essential bills, and, according to Hansen in that New Yorker article, immediately cease making new coal plants: "Hansen estimates the dangerous amount of carbon dioxide to be no more than three hundred and fifty parts per million. The bad news is that carbon dioxide levels have already reached three hundred and eighty-five parts per million. Hansen argues that the only way we can constrain the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to drastically decrease the use of coal."

Not to over-simplify or state the obvious, but you'd think that all of this just wouldn't be so hard. That we could step away from our human dysfunction for five minutes and come up with a plan to save ourselves. At this point my main hope is that enough politicians and titans of industry and citizens will see this broken weather as the incredibly motivating sign that it is and start easing up the breaks on everything that's preventing us from getting it together. I keep picturing senators on their summer golf vacations looking up at the stormy sky and getting pelted with July hail (for real--yesterday, in New Jersey) and say, hmmm. Maybe I should get on board with this climate change stuff.

[Image via: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Storm_Approaching_Anna_Bay.JPG]