The New Normal

According to Newsweek magazine, the new normal is "weather panic."

I guess it's still not politically correct to utter the words "global warming." It is politically correct (read:expedient) to use fear when it comes to foreigners and panic when it comes to nature. Since I've already addressed the former (in Allergy Season), let's scale the latter (in a less cryptic way than Courting Disaster.)

Perhaps "panic" is the correct word to speak of the recent decision to stop the carbon-capture project in West Virginia, while dropping 'topping off (coal mounts) legislation' there. "Coal is king" states, including Pennsylvania, can now close their eyes, while the world holds its breadth, to the worst 'greenhouse conveyor.'

Similarly, "panic" seems to describe the reaction to our President's reversal of his 'environmentaly responsible' policy so strongly advocated during the last election.

Even while travelling to parts of the country devastated by the severest weather on record, he asks the wrong (read:trite) questions and and gives the cowardly answer.

Elizabeth Kolbert recently took issue with the president's answer for Joplin, Mo. by writing, "It may be beyond our power to control the climate, but we can determine it." Strange how an advertised "Yes we can" president is powerless to do anything "environmentally friendly" in his own country's backyard.

As you must know by now, "weather panic" is not the thing that gets me hot under the collar; it's whether or not the President, like the king in the fairytale, has any clothes. If not, maybe someone could stitch all these quotation marks together to make something weather-proof for him.