Forecast: Disaster?

We’re approaching what are historically the coldest days of the year in Boston, but the forecast is for temperatures in the 50s for the next few days -- maybe reaching 60 on Saturday. Weather, of course, vacillates widely and one week or year is symptomatic of nothing. The warming trend of recent decades, however, cannot be denied.

While we sit here and talk about the possible effects of global climate change 20 or 50 years down the road, some small islands have already been swallowed up by rising oceans, their people – environmental refugees – forced to move elsewhere. Each of us, me included, needs to do as much as we can to limit our use of energy that necessitates the burning of greenhouse gases. The consequences of our lack of action so far have been slow, but they are going to happen faster and the form they will manifest cannot be predicted.