{"id":4272,"date":"2011-12-17T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2011-12-17T04:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/?p=4272"},"modified":"2011-12-13T11:42:25","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T15:42:25","slug":"year-2-month-12-day-17-sparkly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/year-2-month-12-day-17-sparkly\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 2, Month 12, Day 17: Sparkly!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/reason-to-smile-about-the-durban-climate-conference\/2011\/12\/12\/gIQA80nZqO_story.html\">Eugene Robinson tries to make it shiny<\/a> in the Washington Post:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>I\u2019m inclined to believe that the apparent result of the climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, might turn out to be a very big deal. Someday. Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>After the meeting ended Sunday, initial reaction ranged from \u201cHistoric Breakthrough: The Planet Is Saved\u201d to \u201cTragic Failure: The Planet Is Doomed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My conclusion is that for now, at least, the conceptual advance made in Durban is as good as it gets.<\/p>\n<p>This advance is, potentially, huge: For the first time, officials of the nations that are the biggest carbon emitters \u2014 China, the United States and India \u2014 have agreed to negotiate legally binding restrictions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The thing is, when there&#8217;s stuff like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2011\/12\/12\/1044726\/-Breaking:-Bubbling--the-news-isnt-good?via=siderec\">this<\/a> showing up in the news, there&#8217;s no wiggle room left for the world&#8217;s nations to eventually maybe someday get around to kinda sorta consider possibly doing something.<\/p>\n<p>Sent December 13:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Our nation&#8217;s ongoing disconnect between political and factual reality is perfectly exemplified in Eugene Robinson&#8217;s attempts at an optimistic assessment of the Durban agreement.  Yes, it&#8217;s nice that many nations have signed a new treaty, but the bad news has, so to speak, circled the globe before the good news has even gotten out of bed.<\/p>\n<p>In the empirically verifiable world of scientifically confirmed facts, the window for avoiding catastrophic climate change is closing far more rapidly than any experts were predicting.  In the non-linear world of American governance, though, kicking the can down the road is a perfectly adequate substitute for action \u2014 because politics, the &#8220;art of the possible,&#8221; makes action impossible.  Remember the recent story of  rural firemen watching a house burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn&#8217;t previously paid a $75 fee?  Will commitment-averse politicians ensure that we all likewise become spectators at our own immolation?<\/p>\n<p>Warren Senders\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eugene Robinson tries to make it shiny in the Washington Post: I\u2019m inclined to believe that the apparent result of the climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, might turn out to be a very big deal. Someday. Maybe. After the meeting ended Sunday, initial reaction ranged from \u201cHistoric Breakthrough: The Planet Is Saved\u201d to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,44],"tags":[985,644],"class_list":["post-4272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-politics","tag-durban-conference","tag-media-irresponsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4273,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4272\/revisions\/4273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.warrensenders.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}