If Global Warming Were a Terrorist
If global warming were a terrorist, then perhaps Newt Gingrich would say that our battle against it is World War III. He would note that people are being killed by record heat around the world. That includes 53 deaths here in the United States so far this summer, and many more across Europe. In France, 40 people have been killed. In the Netherlands, they’ve had the hottest July ever recorded, and they started recording the temperatures there three hundred years ago.
If global warming were a terrorist, George W. Bush would call it evil and say it has changed everything. Bush would make speeches observing that the attacks of climate change are relentless. Unlike the rare attacks by Al Quaida, attacks by the global warming terrorists are frequent and consistent, year after year. Last year, there was the Hurricane Katrina terrorist cell. This year, in addition to all the people dying of the record heat, there has been an astounding increase in wildfires burning across America. If global warming were a terrorist, we’d call those fires arson, and describe them as an attack on the heartland.
Of course, global warming is not a terrorist. It doesn’t have a haggard-looking leader with a menacing photograph we can show on television. It doesn’t send attention-getting cassette tapes promising further attacks that never come to fruition.
Global warming is not a terrorist. So, we sacrifice the American way of life to the growing power of Homeland Security, while we neglect the very land that we call home.
The UK’s been getting record-breaking heatwaves several years running now, too…
And all this is not repeating the big impact it’s having on the environment we can see.
It’s only going to get worse. Count on humanity to go on killing each other and ignoring the entire planet as our home for years to come. It’ll be impossible to wage war in the near future (i give it another 20 years, tops), due to the fact that EVERYONE on Earth will be suffering mightily from heat, earthquakes, droughts, floods, hurricanes, a dying ocean, the extinction of too many species of plants and animals, lack of potable water, scarcity of food, collapsing world economies, (and on and on). It’s too late folks, and i don’t see any big changes to the mass stupidity of humanity coming about any time soon. Our own cities are beginning to show the devolution of society (look at the homicide rates for starters). Everything’s connected. If you don’t take care of each other (which means tackling the big problems like homelessness, health care, and a living wage, among many other “human” factors; then there’s living in harmony with the planet - for which we’d probably have to change the very way we live and get around on Earth) we all eventually go down together. There’s so much work to do in living sustainably that everyone would have to work towards our common goals - feeding the world, teaching everyone, health care all around. Earth would be such a great place to live if we just started doing it right. But of course this sounds a lot like a comfy bed-time story, so i’ll watch the world go on in its own way. It’s probably for the best.