This is one of the most straight-forward discussions of climate change I've run across.  Aubrey Cohen at the PI wrote a great piece on what a man named Auden Schendler, executive director of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Co. and author of "Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability", writes and talks about. 

Schendler spoke at a lunch sponsored by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce".  (I want to know if the National Chamber of Commerce and the Seattle Chapter talk to each other.) 

"The polar ice caps are melting, and the Midwest in the spring of 2008 experienced flooding consistent with 20 years of climate modeling; Denver was experiencing record drought, with only three inches of rain through July 2008; and Grand Junction was about to break a record for consecutive days over 90 degrees. And we're banning plastic bags," he wrote. "To quote John McEnroe: 'You have got to be kidding me!'"

The article lead in the PI encapsulated Schendler's message: "Don't 'rinky-dink around the margins' of climate change".

Schendler agrees, probably for a different reason, with what Dick Cheney said about individual conservation measures being "a personal virtue" but not of much of a national policy.  He says, "It isn't that people shouldn't recycle, drive efficient cars or change out their incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents. It's that these have become a distraction from what really stands a chance of staving off global climate catastrophe."  Of course people should "recycle, drive efficient cars or change out their incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescents. It's that these have become a distraction from what really stands a chance of staving off global climate catastrophe."

Bottom line: "We need to cut our carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050".  It means changing everything we do.  He says that government action is what is needed but "that's been stalled by an industry PR campaign that has usurped the tobacco playbook, continually questioning established science." . . . "We, as Americans, should feel so stupid for being slimed a second time by the exact same tactics."

"And we don't have time to wait", Schendler said.  He noted that Rajendra Pachauri, the George W. Bush administration-tapped head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said: "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

Indeed.  There's more in this excellent acticle.

Photo by simminch under Creative Commons
North Dakota flood rescue by Coast Guard