Sigh

One of the benefits of being a generally compulsively busy person (and believe me, there are many) is that I don't usually read the entire newspaper. I glance at page one and the editorials, read arts and Thursday/Sunday Stupids cover-to-cover and occasionally skim the science/metro/business (and even more occasionally) sports sections. But, now that the whole teaching-kiddies-to-write-plays thing has subsided, I've got some time on my hands, and, mainly as a method of creative avoidance, I've been reading the whole thing. . . and shit's fucked up.

I know that the primary business of newspapers is to sell drama and that there might not be anything more annoying than overpriviliged white lady hand-wringing about global warming, but I tell ya, I feel like wringing. I'm fundamentally pessimistic about the ability of this country (and, to tell the truth, other countries as well . . . sorry, Europe, but your track record's not as good as you think it is, and Asia -- oy) to adopt measures to halt or even slow it down. And I know the Earth's climate has been through a lot, since before there was even the possibility of humans, but I also think that massive climate change will likely cause enormous human suffering, even if some new forms of species pick up where the old ones left off. I also tend to figure that the suffering will be distributed, as it tends to be, largely to those who were already suffering in the first place.

I feel pretty good about the life that Beloved Husband and I lead from an ecological perspective (bike-based transportation, recycling, composting vegetable waste, buying local organic produce when possible, using energy efficient light bulbs, living with a hot house in the summer and a cold one in the winter, etc.) but I also feel like an ineffectual hippie weirdo bucket drop.

Anyway, enough whining from me. The Earth and people will contine to function and maybe things will get better. At least the Warren Buffett thing is good news. I know because I read every single article on it.