Traitors, Denying Climate Change

WHERE I LIVE, in the mid American south, April is always the rainiest month of the year, followed closely by March and maybe May. This year, however, as we exit March, we are quite evidently in the throes of yet another drought, a rare if ever month of March drought. I cannot remember ever having a drought in March in this area before. Just when the trees are starting to leave out, the shrubbery and flowers are beginning to bloom, and teh weeds and grass are starting to grow, we have a drought. I can remember August droughts going back to my long gone childhood in this part of the country, lasting maybe a couple of weeks tops, but always ending seemingly just in time. That is normal for this part of the country. But not this. I cannot remember a drought of this magnitude ever happening around here at this time of year, and most likely neither can anybody else. Our average anual rainfall here in Arkansas is around forty six inches a year. We are a rainy part of the country, with our huge forests and smaller wooded areas sucking up the H2O nourishment necessary to prevent our bioregion from eutrophying into, say, a vast prairie grassland, or an even a more dessicated desert. Heaven forbod that we should lose our woodlands and become another Kansas. But of course it could and might well happen. I must hope and assume that soon things will return to "normal", an that the rains will return, april showers, May flowers, and so forth. I cannot, however, stop thinking about and worrying thsi coming summer, and for that matter all future summers, here in my neck of the woods, and everywhere else on planet Earth. I rememer one horrible summer, ten or fifteen years ago, when teh August drought was so severe that the tres started turning brown and shedding leaves befor Labor Day, and I remember how freaked out and frightened I was. I am sure I was not alone. Drought frightens me, truly scare me, perhpas because I have seen its impact. Ita a slow, nagging, energy draining fear, as oppsoed to the adrenalin boosting maniacal fear which a tornado,or even the film footage of a tornado frightens me with sudden intensity. Tha opening tornado scene in "The Wizard Of Oz" still has much the effect on me as it did when I was a tiny tot, terrified of he iage on the black and white television screen. Well, around her, in tornado alley, we have a lot fo both, tornados, and,increasingly, drought. Theproblemwith climate change is that you can tun, but you cannot hide. Evry square inch of planet Earth is being and will contiune to be ever more changed by human behavior. The climate is changing fast, everywhere, dramatically,and not for the better. The simple, common sense behing climae change is that if you pump a huge amounot of heat into the atmosphere, teh atmosphere becomes more energetic, and the air starts moving more and more, a windier and windier world. Hence the increase in violent weather, all over the world. So simple, so easy to understand. To deny the reality of climate change is more than irresponsible, it is pathological. "The priest fears the advance of science like the witch fears the approach of dawn", said Jefferson... For instance: how lovely would it be if the Republican party in the United States suddenly, formally changed its position, and declared, as the Department of Defense did more than twenty years ago, that cliamte change is the greatest threat to America's future, becasue it really is? What, other than traitors, are citizens who refuse to address threats to their own country?