My fearless editor of Tangerine Tango asked a question on her Facebook page. Lisa Winkler said,
“The cicadas are gone. What world will they find in 17 years?”
Now I wouldn’t blame you for missing that speech President Obama made at Georgetown University on climate change. After all, there was testimony in the Trayvon Martin case to analyze. His poor teenage girlfriend got the third degree from a jokester defense attorney because she was the last one to speak with him on his way home with Skittles in his pocket and an Arizona Iced Tea in his hand.
And then we had to pull apart the Paula Deen redemption interview with Matt Lauer. He sat back, pompously asking her if she was a racist, digging deep into her Southern gentility. I am glad she has finally hired a PR closer, Judy Smith; the DC crisis manager who is supposedly the inspiration for Scandal’s Olivia Pope. In truth, it’s a show I don’t watch, could somebody bring back The West Wing?
And of course we had some mighty interesting SCOTUS decisions to follow, as the Court seemingly stepped back to the future.
But back to the cicada question…17 years from now will a certain barrier island off the Jersey Shore still be here? Our President decided finally to do something concrete last week about climate change, to bypass an intransigent Congress, and try to save that Blue Marble we call earth! “It was an image of Earth -– beautiful; breathtaking; a glowing marble of blue oceans, and green forests, and brown mountains brushed with white clouds, rising over the surface of the moon,”the President said.
Obama talked about carbon emissions but he really focused on water; on rising sea levels and flooding, on depleting our aquifers. Here’s what he said, in a nutshell:
“And we’ll partner with communities seeking help to prepare for droughts and floods, reduce the risk of wildfires, protect the dunes and wetlands that pull double duty as green space and as natural storm barriers. And we’ll also open our climate data and NASA climate imagery to the public, to make sure that cities and states assess risk under different climate scenarios, so that we don’t waste money building structures that don’t withstand the next storm.”
In local news relating to water. two UVA sorority girls were surrounded and attacked by men in plain clothes, with guns drawn, in our upscale shopping center after leaving Harris Teeter with cases of La Croix bottled water and ice cream. Yes, the Alcoholic Beverage Control agents thought they were underage purchasers of beer, while their blue cartons only contained water…still one girl had to spend an afternoon and an evening in jail and they were charged with a felony. Go figure. Maybe before trying to save this blue marble, we should try to find the marbles we’ve lost?
http://mobi.dailyprogress.com/progress/db_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=QD76VKml&full=true#display
MountainMornings 