Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 12:00 am
If our politicians would just shut up about global warming, they might have better luck getting the general public to accept the sound notion that the economy should move or be pushed toward cleaner energy sources.
As it is, the incessant carping on warming takes away from the message while our region endures unseasonal cold.
The Sierra Club reports that Gov. Kulongoski and Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, one of Al Gore's 100 acolytes on the warming bandwagon, joined a Portland rally Monday. They and others "challenged citizens, businesses and political candidates to take action now to fight the impending threat of climate change."
The club quoted our governor: "We have shown that it's possible to fight global warming while investing in our economy and creating new jobs."
Nobody needs convincing that we should develop new forms of energy for transportation, heating and making electricity. The price of traditional sources alone tells us that.
The trouble is that the new sources cost even more, at least for now. That is why we are being hammered with the warming crisis, as an incentive to accept a higher cost of living.
But the average person, meaning all of us, has trouble with differentiating between actually warmer weather on the one hand and the climate-change "warming" of a couple of degrees over half a century or so, especially if that "warming" means that in the Arctic the nighttime temperatures might dip only 40 degrees below freezing rather than 60. Gradual climate change does not not actually result in noticeably warmer weather, which we would welcome right about now.
So, as long as spring refuses to come, as long as winter hangs in there with record-breaking late snow and sleet, talk of warming seems exceedingly ill suited to get across any kind of point. (hh)