By Bill Shein
February 9, 2015
As I write these words on Monday (January 26), another intense storm is barreling into the northeast, bringing cold, wind, and possibly record snowfall. On my face, the air has a brisk, but not yet biting, and moist, but not quite wet feel familiar to New Englanders outside before a snowstorm. And also to writers who – for the sake of argument – are currently locked out of their house with a deadline looming.
Astronomers are also eyeing a “potentially hazardous” asteroid hurtling towards the earth, confident it will pass “safely” about a million miles from our troubled planet, where our always-responsible media remains properly focused on Very Important Things.
The killer asteroid’s diameter is equal to five football fields. Using a reference point torn from the headlines, that dwarfs the length of eleven underinflated footballs arranged end-to-end.
If the scientists were wrong about the trajectory, you’ll never see these words or get the truth about those footballs. And we’ll never know how big the coming storm would have been. Or was, as you’re reading this later. Got it?
If there was a catastrophic asteroid collision before the snowstorm’s arrival, I will have wasted my final hours gathering bottled water, batteries, candles, waterproof matches, canned food, a diesel generator, gold bullion, vegetable seeds, toilet paper, animal skins, water purification tablets, comic books, assorted topographical maps, cartons of first-aid supplies, a pocket guide to edible plants – that is, itself, also edible – and the few hundred other things I purchased today, depleting my entire life savings.
But that’s just me; apparently some other people get totally carried away with storm preparations. Who can blame them? Each (potential) big storm offers The Weather Channel’s advertising-sales department a chance to use descriptions and warnings sure to terrify viewers.
This does little to reduce panic and inspire reasonableness. People stay tuned to TV and Internet – at least while there’s power – in advance of doomsday storms named “Beelzebub” or “She’s a-Comin’ to Get Your Children” or “President Mitt Romney.” It’s no wonder people run screaming into the streets.
To be sure, be prepared, particularly as climate change guarantees more “super storms” are coming our way. But is The Weather Channel majority-owned by a consortium of bottled water, backup generator and candle companies? Recall that the network’s co-founder, meteorologist John Coleman, is a well-known climate-change denier. And climate change means more powerful storms, which is good for the TV weather (and bottled-water) business.
To its credit, the network has distanced itself from Coleman’s considered opinion that climate change is “baloney” – a wholly scientific term, I assume, derived from studies proving the pork-based luncheon meat’s negligible warming impact when it’s hurled into the sky.
Each winter storm and blast of cold is also an opportunity for climate-change deniers to elbow each other playfully and say, “Sure doesn’t feel like global warming to me, how ‘bout you, Bob?”
SFX: Sounds of uproarious laughter, revving of Hummer engines, roar of coal-fired power plants running at capacity, and the anguished screams of children living on earth in 2115.
To defenders of the status quo, heat waves that kill thousands, rapidly acidifying oceans, runaway species extinction, and intense storms carrying record-setting amounts of moisture – already wreaking havoc on Berkshires infrastructure designed for a more stable climate – are no cause for alarm. It’s perfectly natural and has nothing to do with an industrial-revolutionized culture pumping heat-trapping gasses into the air like there’s, ahem, no tomorrow. Nothing to see here. Move along, please.
Apparently those who call for massive action on climate – including putting a price on carbon emissions – are all part of an elaborate liberal conspiracy to enrich Al Gore and empower the EPA to imprison people at will.
(Full disclosure: As a longtime advocate for massive climate action, I do have to send 10 percent of my income to the former vice president. But deniers will soon be required to send him 30 percent. Whoa!)
Assuming that asteroid missed us, or was destroyed by Bruce Willis with moments to spare, cleanup from the snowstorm should be done by now. Thank you, road crews and utility workers! If it set snowfall records – and even if it didn’t – it’s another powerful reminder that climate must become our most urgent priority.
Because if we don’t act boldly, extreme weather and environmental instability will intensify, and jokes about doomsday prepping and edible edible-plant guidebooks won’t stay funny for long. But Romney gags? Those have recently been given new life.
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In his Etsy online shop, Bill Shein sells long-burning candles that look like Mitt Romney.
(This column was first published in The Berkshire Record on Thursday, January 29.)