Climate change effects: Irony or just reward?
In the November 2000 presidential election, Al Gore lost the presidency by failing to carry Florida. With private citizenship forced upon him, Gore devoted himself full-time to his passion of combating global warming. In the 2006 film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore showed a slide of a worst-case scenario for Florida in which all of the coastline and much of south Florida would disappear beneath rising waters caused by glacial melt.
The subtitle to that film’s sequel, which has just been released, is precisely on point: “Truth to Power.” Climate change deniers are in all the positions of power in Washington, and Gore’s message, which was prescient in 2006, is now more urgent than ever.
On Aug. 10, The Tribune reported on a University of Florida study showing that from 2011 to 2015, the sea level along the southeast coast of the country rose at six times the normal long-term rate, which worldwide is about a foot a century. The article also reports of one or two feet of water flooding the streets of Miami and Ft. Lauderdale for no apparent reason.
Irony or just reward?
Max Riedlsperger, San Luis Obispo
This story was originally published August 17, 2017 at 7:31 AM with the headline "Climate change effects: Irony or just reward?."