Saints, Snowmaggedon and Climate Change

The New Orleans Saints won the Superbowl in order to prove that serious climate change is challenging humanity.

Or what I really meant to say was that, by bringing attention to the City of New Orleans just as the Nation's Capital was getting buried in an epic snow, the Who Dat Saints also brought attention to the fact that the Big Easy has still not recovered from the Big Flood engineered by the Army Corp of same after their ill-constructed levees broke during a visit from a nasty tourist named Katrina.

Or what I really meant to say was that, despite the shallow (or on-purpose cynical) misunderstanding of the nature and implications of climate change by those who are quite certain it has nothing to do with billions of tons of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere to support our air-conditioned style of Modern Living, the confluence of both overheated tropical storming and overcooled, overmoistened northern storming simply suggests that yes: much as the scientific models have predicted, we are now subject to a pattern of weather extremes that rather strongly suggest a period of climate flux.

Or what I am really getting at is, I am not quite convinced myself that the matter of weather patterns parting from their historical norms is due more to pollution than to over-attention (or new attention, anyway) much as, say "autism" is a diagnosis based on perception and new attention rather than a sudden huge increase in sickly children. Does anybody recall there were always those kids in class who were somehow just "different" or unfortunately "weird" or oddly "quiet"? Now they're victims of "autism spectrum syndrome". Fine. But they're still the same kinds of kids, and probably showing up in the same amounts.

Or what I am really saying is, even though I am not convinced that humans are the cause of global climate change, I think it more or less stands to reason we may have a role in it. And in a way, the whole "global warming" debate obscures the real action item for the industrialized carbon-based beings swarming the planet these days (eg. us), and that is: we really should be taking better care of the place.

For instance, does the threat of global warning make it any less shameful that we chop down forests to make BK Broilers, destroy delicate habitats to line our floors with "beautiful, durable hardwood" slats, dump plastic in the ocean in such quantities that we have created poison-leeching mini-continents drifting in the mid-Pacific, belch enough smoke into the air such that Beijing is a massive cancer-ward while East L.A. reeks half the year in filthy smog, reduce the habitats of brave and beautiful animals like the Siberian Tiger to the point where as a species they are hanging on by a claw?

It does not.

For the sake of the Tiger and the Vu Quong Ox and for those who must breathe filthy air and for the sake of the cruelly torn jungles and forests, can we please take a step back and ask how we might stop the wantonness of our destruction? Does it really matter if we are responsible for Katrina, or Snowmaggedon, or the shrinking of the ice-caps?

It does not.

We just have to stop killing and burning and smoking it up on the massive scale we have become accustomed to, not because we know it's going to cause a climate problem, but because it's ugly and stupid and in the end, immoral.

Climate change? Maybe. Throw a little love to the tigers? Yes.

And by the way: Who Dat?

I Agree with Sarah (Not Really)

But sort of, and only in a manner that gives me an excuse to rage against pollution in general and then specifically against the way the Magilla from Wasilla emits pollution like a garbage truck in need of a ring job.

Sarah says global warming is real, but we can't necessarily pin it on man-made causes. I agree. The fact is, we cannot know. The earth is a big, old place and it has had ice-ages and Devonian heat-waves in its own seemingly whimsical Can't-Fool-Mother-Nature way for about four billion years. If the temperature generally rises 3 degrees and causes the ice caps to melt, it may be a disaster for us but for the Earth (or Gaia if you must), it's not much more than the feeling you'd get if you broke a sweat trying to catch the bus.

That said, I see no connection whatever between the argument that the earth is/is not warming because of us, and the real outrage that ought to be inspired by the multi-stage environmental disasters we know we are causing, and which are at best depressing and often enough mind-blowing in their rank awfulness.

Sure, Gaia doesn't care whether the Siberian Tiger makes it to the year 2050. But I do. And I know we are causing it to die off because we keep cutting down its forested habitat. Of course we can't know if Antarctica is turning into a palm-fronded paradise because of us. But we do know that the Amazon is getting burned down, and that sludge in the water is killing children there, and that wonderful new species of plants and animals are being discovered there only as they are being destroyed in a sickening quest for cheaper burger-beef (even though I love The King of BK fame).

It may be true that Al Gore is Chicken Little. I never thought he was brilliant (he never seemed bright compared to Clinton, anyway), nor that he really had made a convincing case just because he knew how to use scary pictures in a pedantic manner. But to me, Global Warming isn't the point. The genuine tragedy is the destruction of habitat and species that we KNOW is our fault.

Make no mistake: of course we need to survive as a species--we claim that right and I support it and even support species bigotry because that's as natural as a lion's quest for breakfast. But I don't support wanton destruction of beautiful, complex natural habitats only to replace them with crude dwellings and cheap crap amusements and dimwitted, potbellied nincompoops complaining the Liberals are out to get them and that Sarah Palin's their six-pack-totin' gal. No.

And in a further note on this woman's eternal gift for glaring tackiness, let us briefly review the crude manner in which she blotted out the name of the Man Who Made Her Queen on the silly sun visor she was wearing at the beach in the State That Had Too Many Hawaiians while wearing a vapid, vituperative shirt that said "If You Don't Love America, Why Don't You Get the Hell Out"?

To which I would answer: Sarah, you are not America. You actually don't love the real America--the multi-racial, multi-cultural one that exists today. So why don't you get the hell out? Alaska would be far enough, and keep your stupid mouth shut while you're at it.