Bill McKibben thinks Americans are starting to connect the dots

[pscot]

I watched it (the collapse of the Williams River bridge) on TV in Washington just after emerging from jail, having been arrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline. Since Vermont’s my home, it took the theoretical -- the ever more turbulent, erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada would help ensure -- and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad.

And I’m not the only one.

New data released last month by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities show that a lot of Americans are growing far more concerned about climate change, precisely because they’re drawing the links between freaky weather, a climate kicked off-kilter by a fossil-fuel guzzling civilization, and their own lives. After a year with a record number of multi-billion dollar weather disasters, seven in ten Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.” No less striking, 35% of the respondents reported that extreme weather had affected them personally in 2011. As Yale’s Anthony Laiserowitz told the New York Times, “People are starting to connect the dots.”[/diiv]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175537/tomgram%3A_bill_mckibben%2C_the_most_important_story_of_our_lives/

[NickB79]

1. Well, better late than never (too bad it's probably TOO late now to do much about it)

Oh you silly Americans.....

[GliderGuider]

2. Bill has chosen one set of dots out of many

They are hugely important dots to be sure, but only if one assumes "ceteris paribus" about the rest of the human experiment. I no longer assume that, so even climate change becomes just one more spear-carrier crowding the stage.

To mangle the Hopi message,
Let go of the bank. Push off into the middle of the river. Keep your head above water and see who is in there with you. Tend your garden. Know where your water is. Take nothing personally. And celebrate! This could be a good time!

[hatrack]

3. And it's only taken 24 yrs since this became broadly public - June, 1988 - for us to (kinda) get it

USA!! USA!! USA!! USA!!