And yet, in much of humor is a serious and frightening threat
You are on a train. There has been a murder on the train. There are seven suspects. One is an heiress, another a known crook. There’s a former circus strongman, a mystery woman who won’t leave her room, and a retired admiral of the French navy. One of them, you are fairly certain, is Meryl Streep preparing to play some role that requires a hefty accent. The other suspect is, of course, you.
The train is heading northeast at 62 miles per hour as it winds its way through the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains with the Arges River flowing rapidly alongside. One mile ahead of you, the bridge is out. Who committed the murder? Who cares. Because if you don’t all get on the brakes right now, everyone—the innocent along with the guilty—are going to be dead in less than one minute.
The missing bridge is climate change. The murder is … anything else.
It has been frustratingly difficult to convince the public, even the progressive public, of the threat represented by climate change. Maybe this will help. It’s Tuesday’s editorial from the Charleston Gazette-Mail of West Virginia, right in the heart of Trump Digs Coal country.
When today’s kindergartners are in their 20s, they may find a devastated world wracked by horrible hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes and other tragedies made worse by global warming. Coastal cities may be abandoned, sunken wrecks. Poverty and misery may result.
If the idea that the lives of your children are going to be extra-brutish and extra-short doesn’t hit the nerve, how about this piece from the New York Times.
A small international team of scientists considered what the effect of climate change would be for this crop in the next 80 years, and they are raising an alarm they hope will pierce the din of political posturing.
They are predicting a beer shortage.
Barley is not one of those crops that can be grown just anywhere. And though a warming climate will make it possible to farm regions to the north, many of those regions are far less fertile than the world’s current “bread baskets.” The areas where those crops are grown today will be too hot, too dry, too wet or some mixture of the above to support their current crops or current levels of production.
No beer. If nothing else has gotten it across, maybe that will.
Of course, there will be hundreds of millions of the homeless and starving displaced around the world, governments and institutions will topple, wars over resources will rage, the biosphere will be decimated, and the needle will totter ever closer to falling off a cliff labeled “this way to Venus.” And you won’t even have any beer to soften the blow.
By the way … now there’s only half a mile left before that missing bridge. Think fast.
You are on a train. There has been a murder on the train. There are seven suspects. One is an heiress, another a known crook. There’s a former circus strongman, a mystery woman who won’t leave her room, and a retired admiral of the French navy. One of them, you are fairly certain, is Meryl Streep preparing to play some role that requires a hefty accent. The other suspect is, of course, you.
The train is heading northeast at 62 miles per hour as it winds its way through the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains with the Arges River flowing rapidly alongside. One mile ahead of you, the bridge is out. Who committed the murder? Who cares. Because if you don’t all get on the brakes right now, everyone—the innocent along with the guilty—are going to be dead in less than one minute.
The missing bridge is climate change. The murder is … anything else.
It has been frustratingly difficult to convince the public, even the progressive public, of the threat represented by climate change. Maybe this will help. It’s Tuesday’s editorial from the Charleston Gazette-Mail of West Virginia, right in the heart of Trump Digs Coal country.
When today’s kindergartners are in their 20s, they may find a devastated world wracked by horrible hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes and other tragedies made worse by global warming. Coastal cities may be abandoned, sunken wrecks. Poverty and misery may result.
If the idea that the lives of your children are going to be extra-brutish and extra-short doesn’t hit the nerve, how about this piece from the New York Times.
A small international team of scientists considered what the effect of climate change would be for this crop in the next 80 years, and they are raising an alarm they hope will pierce the din of political posturing.
They are predicting a beer shortage.
Barley is not one of those crops that can be grown just anywhere. And though a warming climate will make it possible to farm regions to the north, many of those regions are far less fertile than the world’s current “bread baskets.” The areas where those crops are grown today will be too hot, too dry, too wet or some mixture of the above to support their current crops or current levels of production.
No beer. If nothing else has gotten it across, maybe that will.
Of course, there will be hundreds of millions of the homeless and starving displaced around the world, governments and institutions will topple, wars over resources will rage, the biosphere will be decimated, and the needle will totter ever closer to falling off a cliff labeled “this way to Venus.” And you won’t even have any beer to soften the blow.
By the way … now there’s only half a mile left before that missing bridge. Think fast.
