"Climate change is here — and worse than we thought" - James Hansen, WP blog post

[patrice]

3. Everyone needs to read this informed opinion and think about

their priorities, when they threaten to throw this presidency in the trash, and ask themselves how much time we have left to get it wrong, before we get it right.

Even if we yield all criticisms of this President, climate change poses the single urgent priority that must be addressed BEFORE we can do anything substantive about many of our other problems.

The facts and urgency of climate change pose real doubts about whether, as some say, President Obama is a corporatist for corporations' sakes, or for some other higher priority reason. Do we really think these studies were unknown to Barack Obama before he became President? Am I the only one who recalls Senator Kerry's words, in the 2004 campaign, on the real threat to America's security being environmental, not, by implication, terrorism, because we have functional responses to that? I believe Lawrence Wright was also writing that at about the same time.

I see Barack Obama with young leaders and with children and consider how the facts of global climate change explain a great deal about the Obama Presidency that has so vexed so many others on what calls itself "the Left".

What chance of the following would we have under a Romney presidency, or if not then, then after what ever length of a period of social upheaval?

There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100?percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.