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| The Year of the Dragon |
My head is full of lists and year-end summaries and such, but my schedule is full of real work, so it will have to wait, but welcome to 2012.
It's going to be hot. It's an election year in the USA (and in France, Russia, Finland and elsewhere) so expect to hear a lot of nonsense talked about the climate, and not a lot of sense. Don't despair. The world will take action to combat climate change, for a simple reason -- unlike the plight of the homeless or conflict in the Middle East or hunger in Africa, climate change, despite being one of those problems people just want to ignore, affects everybody, and is going to get worse and worse until even the most short-sighted (well, most of them) see the need for action.
By then, you say, it will be too late? Maybe, but, then, by most objective definitions, it has been too late for some time. Too late to avoid radically transforming the climate. Too late to avoid melting the permafrost. Too late to avoid drought in the Amazon and the crumbling of the WAIS into the sea.
But it will never be too late to pick ourselves up and stop making things worse. It seems like 2012 will not be the year we stop nibbling around the edges of the problem with tiny subsides and minimal regulation, but who knows the future, especially in politics -- I certainly don't.
In 2012 at IT we will continue to watch the science, watch the deniers, and on the basis of that reporting, advocate strongly for real action to combat global warming. We won't exaggerate, we won't demonize, we won't give way to hysteria; those are unhelpful responses. But we will be heard and we will be here, with no retiring or taking a blogging break or moving on to some other hobbyhorse. We'll be here in 2012, and onward, until the world has well and truly changed course.
