While we can't blame global climate change for any specific weather event, the disasters now unfolding follow a pattern of greater extremes predicted by scientists amid rising world temperatures. A warmer atmosphere, for instance, holds more water vapor, which produces heavier rainfall. (Just ask the people of Nashville, where the stage of the Grand Ole Opry was under water earlier this year.)
If we don't take steps to stop climate change, these freakish extremes will become the new norm in the decades to come. How many droughts, fires, and floods will it take before we act?
Despite the evident urgency of the issue, the U.S. Senate failed to consider a climate and energy bill before members of Congress returned home this month. The odds of such legislation passing this year look very slim.
Not that the proposals being considered were anything to be hopeful about.
The latest congressional measure to limit carbon dioxide emissions is aimed only at electric utilities, and it would give away most permits to emit the greenhouse gas in the initial years. When the free permits run out, the proposal would allow polluters to purchase cheap carbon offsets that would, in most instances, fail to produce net reductions in CO2.
Top it all off with a volatile trading system that fails to send a clear price signal to clean-energy investors, and you have a recipe for failure.
This is what you might expect, of course, when legislation to control climate change is dictated by the people who are causing it. Perhaps Congress should stop trying to appease the coal and oil lobbies and start listening to the folks who actually want to preserve a sustainable world for their grandchildren.
