Month 10, Day 11: Meanwhile…

The UK Telegraph’s environmental correspondent, Louise Grey, writes about the likelihood of failure (again) in Cancun this year, in an article accompanied by the single most gratuitously irrelevant photograph imaginable for an article on global climate change. The comments on this article are a mine of stupid.

The inability of the United States and China to reach consensus on reducing greenhouse gases is a single small, depressing chapter in a planetary tragedy. America’s inaction can be ascribed to a few score members of the U.S. Senate who are either in profound denial about the facts of global warming or who wish to avoid offending those of their constituents who are in similar denial. That this is an election year renders it even more difficult; very few American politicians are ready to tackle the famously deep-pocketed fossil fuel interests. China, for its part, has little reason to trust the United States. And thus this year’s attempt to find agreement on the gravest existential threat humanity has ever faced seems likely to founder — just like last year’s. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide is at almost four hundred parts per million and rising. The clock is ticking for us all.

Warren Senders