Barack Obama's First Priority

Oh, how I want to write about the torture mess. Instead, I'm going to start with what's most important. And believe me, it's hard for me to say that anything is more important than the torture mess. But, global climate change is.

I have heard President Barack Obama say that his first priority is keeping Americans safe. (More another time on the irony of how much that sounds like George Bush.) Yesterday I heard a member of his administration say that reforming the health care system was the President's first priority. Unless I'm mistaken, I've heard him and others mention other things from time to time as his "first priority." Someone needs to tell him that you can't really have more than one "first" priority.

He needs to make global climate change his first priority, and he needs to do so quickly. If he doesn't, then none of the rest of his "first priorities" are going to matter much in the long run.

I haven't kept an exhaustive record, nor have I made any attempt to monitor and review every new study or work of research that comes out about global climate change. However, I pay attention. It is safe to say that almost every new study or work of research finds that the old projections of climate change have been underestimations, and that the most current projections are much worse than the last projections.

I don't want to be too melodramatic, but ... We're all gonna die!

To use a metaphor that the President used the other day about the ship of state, the global climate is an ocean liner, not a speed boat. Once it gets started in a certain direction, it is very, very difficult to turn or to stop. It just keeps going, in the same direction, long after you yank the rudder hard to the side or reverse the engines.

Our ocean liner is heading for the edge of the world, and it will drop off into the Abyss if we don't get it stopped and turn it around soon. Time is quickly running out to accomplish that task.

Now, there are those at both extremes of the spectrum that think that's not such a bad idea. I know people who think that the extinction of homo sapiens will be a net plus. I also know people who trust that Jesus is coming back soon and he'll save us, or at least some of us, so why worry?

Unless you belong to one of those extremes, you'd better be worried. Very worried. You'd better be demanding that your President make global climate change his first priority.

Honestly, riding your bike to work and turning off your air conditioner won't do it. Sure, if everyone rode their bikes to work and turned off their air conditioners, that might have some impact on this doomed ocean liner's course. But you, by yourself? You're just making yourself uncomfortable.

We have to act as a nation, and we have to take drastic action, and we have to do it soon. Like, in the next year or so. If we don't, then we can stop worrying. Eat, drink, and be merry, for in a hundred years we will die. Not us, of course, but our species.

Once we have determined to act drastically as a nation, then we have to find ways to persuade all the other nations of the world to do the same.

That takes national leadership, and our national leadership is Barack Obama. That's the bottom line.

I remember George Bush saying that he wasn't going to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, even though he'd promised to do so in his campaign for President. He said it would be too hard on the economy.

What do we think is going to happen to our economy when New York City is under 20 feet of water?