Connecting the Dots

Global warming warrior Bill McKibben has a good piece out on his 350.org website about the relationships among all the bizarre weather events we've had in recent months (tornadoes, floods, droughts, blizzards, etc.). I think it's vitally important for us to realize, as McKibben's essay makes clear, that global warming is not only REAL, it's HERE--right now. I hear too many people saying, "oh, IF global warming happens, then we'll do something about it." These people have failed to do what McKibben does: to draw connections among the surface manifestations (that is, the weather) and trace them to their underlying cause (that is, a warmer climate). It's hard to think systemically; I always tell my students that when they prefer to look at isolated cases out of context. But it's what we need to do, right now, if we are ever to get a handle on this global-systemic problem.