Head for the hills, sports fans! Quoting the article:
The next time a ball game gets rained out during the September stretch run, you can curse the momentary worthlessness of those tickets in your pocket. Or you can wonder why it got rained out — and ask yourself why practice had to be called off last summer on a day when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky; and why that Gulf Coast wharf where you used to reel in mackerel and flounder no longer exists; and why it’s been more than one winter since you pulled those titanium skis out of the garage.
Global warming is not coming; it is here. …Evidence is everywhere of a future hurtling toward us faster than scientists forecasted even a few years ago. Searing heat is turning that rite of passage of Texas high school football, the August two-a-day, into a one-at-night, while at the game’s highest level the Miami Dolphins, once famous for sweating players into shape, have thrown in the soggy towel and built a climate-controlled practice bubble. Even the baseball bat as we know it is in peril, and final scores and outcomes of plays may be altered too. …
Unlike many other pressing environmental concerns — pollution, water shortages, overpopulation, deforestation — global warming is by definition global. Every organism on the planet is already feeling its impact.
“There are many important environmental battles to be fought,” says Bill McKibben, the Vermont-based writer, activist and passionate cross-country skier. “But if we lose this one — which we’re doing — none of the others matter. It’s crunch time.” …
McKibben says … We’re still so used to the idea that we can deal with the forces of nature that we think nothing of naming our teams Hurricanes and Cyclones. In 10 years, that will be like calling a team the Plagues.”
Ten years. That’s two-and-a-half Olympiads — enough time for our teams and athletes to take the lead, galvanize attention and influence behavior.
Criminy, what buncombe — the ending especially.
It’s saying something about the intellectual integrity of a movement that declares that within 10 years we’ll reach a “tipping point” at which nothing we could ever do could stop the warming cataclysm, but right now if we just switched light bulbs or used more ethanol we could avert disaster.
