So in this hot-as-hell summer it’s hard to keep up with all the bad news on the Climate Change front, and I can barely bring myself to read ThinkProgress.org lately, good as it is, because the news is just a drumbeat of despicable politicians in the pocket of Big Oil or their own greed and myopia. It seems the whole country is frying. In my little neck of the woods, at 8,823 feet in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, our summer “monsoons” have been fitful, hit-and-miss—mainly miss. A normal year our yard is lush and green with typical (and reliable) afternoon rains. All the locals up here note how the summer rains have been less reliable in the last few years, which I’ve noticed, too (we’ve owned the house a decade now, enough to see good years and bad). While the whole country seems to be acknowledging the danger of this heat and drought, our politicians are doing anything they can to deny it, or simply not do a thing about it. The Republican smear campaign about Solyndra is a smokescreen: Sure, there will be alternative energy successes and failures, the same as any other industry, but if we don’t go out of our way to promote it, we’re doomed to the Business As Usual, which is what is leading us to Doom. I hope the next week finds something for me to feel optimistic about. Perhaps the answer lies on the moon.
