Supreme Court to rule on carbon emissions
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Posted on June 28, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today form Margaret Swedish:
The sun is shining in the DC area this morning. We finally have a chance to dry out from our record-breaking rainfall. The place is saturated, wet, steamy, muddy.
No single weather event tells us anything about global warming and climate change, but they can give us an indication of what it will be like as computer models’ predictions begin to manifest. A warmer earth means rain events will be bigger rain events and storms will be bigger storms (more warmth means more energy available to feed them).
Boston had more rain in the previous two months than ever recorded. DC shattered records for rain totals in the month of June. The intense rains in the northeast follow the computer models, as does the extreme drought in the southwest. It has been unusually warm in London. The glaciers keep melting all over the world. 2005 saw a record number of tornados in the US. And then there are the hurricanes.
And yesterday, the big issue in Congress was a proposed Constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning (or as some call it, the “look over there” strategy).
As we noted yesterday, some scientists believe the earth’s atmosphere has already gone out of balance, which means our weather will only get crazier. The rains of the past week have caused great economic losses. This will also be part of the future.
Yet no one can say, this weather event this particular time is caused by global warming. Because we can’t do that, naysayers and deniers have room to ridicule the science, to convince people to take a wait-and-see attitude, to put off action for another political year, another generation.
Problem is, once the proof of experience is incontrovertible, it will be way too late to keep terrible things from happening. The threshold will have been crossed.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is about to take up a very important case related to the carbon emissions that are among the principal causes of global warming. Some dozen or so states are suing the federal government to try to force it to set higher mileage standards for the vehicles we drive. I send you over to a fellow blogger for info on the court case. And here is what I wrote on the suit filed by the states.
I am not optimistic, given the remake of the court during the Bush administration. But we’ll see. Maybe the info that will flow from this case will alarm this pro-business court enough to defend the right of the citizens of this country to a future.
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