Warming

Last night on the way home from a great Chinese dinner Bobbi and I were commenting on how mild the weather still is. I actually took up the golf clubs for the first time in six months this week and the weather was very pleasant. I even worked up a sweat on the driving range after hitting two large buckets of balls.

I got to thinking about my friends who have bought winter get-a-ways in Mexico and whether they will be too hot in the winter to enjoy and if the beaches will survive rising ocean levels.

I know I am constantly on this global warming thing but everyone should read this from the New York Times today. It really is time for some radical actions on dealing with this, but I am not holding my breath. Why are we talking about more coal fired plants, tar sands, or any energy source that pumps greenhouse gasses into the air? Inertia and profits are the answer and a campaign finance system that caters to it.

Yesterday there was another complex story in the Times about putting economic values on the cost to future generations of not doing something to fix this. It is about the “social rate of time discount,” the rate used to compare the well-being of future generations to the well-being of those alive today. As I said, this is complex stuff so we really need a President who understands it after the next election.