Five years ago, back when I was working for The Treehuggers, people who study these things told me that we were already 25 years too late to stop global warming; the damage we’d done to the planet was too vast and the only thing we could do was not do more.
Whether what is going on is attributable to global warming or not is a matter for debate but as I type this it is 70degF on January 6th at 40deg N latitutde, and yes, I’m inordinately pleased by this. NOAA has been widely quoted as saying that a strong warm weather pattern from El Nino is keeping the artic air we’d normally be seeing in the U.S. up in the north and is the reason why it feels like April and I have every window in my house open.
I freely admit that I’m a weather slut: my mood, my disposition, my outlook, my libido all improve when the weather is good. I really should be living on a tropical island somewhere. Unfortunately most tropical islands have this one little problem: if you didn’t bring it, it ain’t there. That and the fact that you really can’t eat beauty and flying or cargo shipping in just about everything you need is really expensive keeps me firmly rooted where I am.
And yes, maybe we’ll be paying for this weather in the beginning of February with snow up to our asses (Um…do the people who live in Denver not know they live in Colorado?) or maybe we won’t. All I do know is that I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
All I know is that for one 70 degree january day, global warming was my friend.
Mixtapes in the cd player and the sunroof of the car popped open does my heart good.