On a slow afternoon recently I cranked up the internet to look at a place in Greenland, well north of the Arctic Circle, where I spent three weeks in the 1970s, courtesy of Uncle Sam. I noted that the ice cap is a lot farther from the base now.
The last several years here in Salmon Creek I’ve been breathing a lot of smoke from wildfires, and westside Cascade fires are more prevalent in the summer. There are many hints if not outright facts that the climate is changing, but I can console myself in that my contribution to climate change is so infinitesimal as to be utterly unmeasurable.
But it is the billions of infinitesimal greenhouse gas contributions that brought us here. We might hope that science will come up with miracle solutions, but that is not guaranteed. In the meantime will we continue to indulge in pleasures and conveniences at the peril of our children? Fifty years from now will they wonder, “What were you thinking?”
