Global Warming Heats Up

ZNet posts this UK Independent Editorial:

In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.

In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change.

The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).

The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately.

Click here.

Even though I have been sympathetic for many years, I am not historically an environmentalist. The issues that made me angry enough to abandon the do-nothing Democrats were more economic and cultural than anything else. Ralph Nader's anti-corporate stance is what made me turn Green. That made something funny happen: I saw the connection. The same heartless, greedy bastards that have usurped our democracy, that have been pushing good, hard-working Americans into nervous poverty are the same heartless, greedy bastards that are raping the planet. The Bush wars (and Clinton's military legacy, as well), the root causes of global terrorism, the pro-rich policies, the anti-poor policies, global warming, toxic contamination of food, air, and water, all these things and more are coming from the same source. To be pro-democracy, to favor economic justice, to be against corporate domination of everything is to be fighting in the same war that the environmentalists have been waging for decades.

I guess that makes me a "tree hugger" now. So be it.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$