| It was January 15, midwinter in early 2004, when
the man
turned aside from the main Northeastern USA trail. The Hudson River lay
a
mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. His mittens made it hard
to work and the display of his palm computer was frosted over but he
wanted something to read, so he clicked on MoveOn.org. As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. It seemed strange that Albert Gore, former Presidential candidate and author of Earth in the Balance, was giving a speech on global warming. "In essence," Gore was saying, "these scientists are telling the people of every nation that global warming caused by human activities is becoming a serious threat to our common future. I am also troubled that the Bush/Cheney Administration does not seem to hear the warnings of the scientific community in the same way that most of us do." At the man's heels trotted a dog, a big Siberian Husky. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. It didn't understand when the man read from Gore's speech, "I don't think there is any longer a credible basis for doubting that the earth's atmosphere is heating up because of global warming. The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable. Global Warming is real. It is happening already and the anticipated consequences are unacceptable." The dog, despite its thick Arctic-grade fur coat, felt overwhelming and undeniable evidence to the exact contrary. It couldn't figure out what was unacceptable about a little warming; it had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air. "Yet in spite of the clear evidence available all around us, there are many who still do not believe that Global Warming is a problem at all. And it's no wonder: because they are the targets of a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters who are determined to prevent any action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, out of a fear that their profits might be affected if they had to stop dumping so much pollution into the atmosphere." The man was so engrossed in reading Al Gore's speech at MoveOn.org on his palm computer that he wasn't paying attention to where he was putting his feet. And then it happened. At a place where there were no signs, where the soft, unbroken snow seemed to advertise solidity beneath, the man broke through.The water underneath was not deep but he wetted himself half-way to the knees before he floundered out to the firm crust. |
It was as though he had just heard his own
sentence of death. He had to build a fire and there could be no
failure. Even if he succeeded, he would
most likely lose some toes. His feet must be badly frozen by now. The
irony of Gore's words, "The problem is that our world is now
confronting a five-alarm fire that
calls for bold moral and political leadership from the United States of
America" could not be more cruel. A five-alarm fire, or any fire indeed, would be very welcome right now. A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and death with the chances against him. This threw him into a panic, and he turned and ran up the creek-bed along the old, dim trail. The dog joined in behind and kept up with him. And at the same time there was another thought in his mind that said he would never get to the camp and the boys; that it was too many miles away, that the freezing had too great a start on him, and that he would soon be stiff and dead. "With such leadership, there is no doubt that we could solve the problem of global warming," Gore's MoveOn.org speech continued. Wait! What was that next to the trail? The truck's radiator had frozen and the driver must have abandoned the vehicle and hiked to safety but several cartons had spilled from the trailer. The man had trouble opening them because his hands were mostly frostbitten but the contents spilled out: dozens of copies of Al Gore's book Earth in the Balance and a complete press run of the Kyoto Global Warming Treaty. All right; the man's hands were frostbitten but he still had his mouth and he was determined to stay alive to vote for George Bush in November. He got the stick of a strike-anywhere match between his teeth, rubbed the tip across the box, and let the burning match fall. It landed among several crumpled copies of the Kyoto Protocol, which promptly burst into flame. Soon the entire consignment of Earth in the Balance was burning as well. The Siberian Husky nestled comfortably against the man as he thawed his frostbitten limbs and watched the carbon dioxide from Earth in the Balance and the Kyoto Treaty spiral merrily upward toward the clouds. |