News Round-up

Joe Romm at climateprogress.org has three great, informative, utterly important posts in a row.

First! Mitigating climate change will not be as expensive as the media makes it sound; many options pay for themselves.


Second! Even the most ambitious global solutions being talked about won't be enough at this point, based on several models created for judging the purpose.


Third! The energy/climate change budget proposal just introduced to the Senate is good! With some bad parts! Find out why! Also, a link to the summary of the budget itself (I think we all prefer the summaries because the actual bill is 648 pages long). Warning: it's a .pdf. Do I have to warn people about this?


Next, Earthhour was pretty successful!


My take on all these is this: the time is right because we simply can't delay. The first step is finding a way to reach more and more people with the real message - that we can't do this gently. I'm not saying the only alternative is violence - of course not - but the changes we have to make, and the speed with which we have to make them, may not be the most comfortable.

So yeah. Even if our economy is crippled, even if most of the Senate Republicans are standing up against whatever despite the enormous popular support the B-man enjoys. Even if we like our way of life the way it is now. Doesn't matter. We've gotta change.

We've gotta change wisely and responsibly, but we've still gotta do it faster, and our changes need to reach farther.

(My hat is tipped to Yglesias for the poll posted above.)