Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, on his most-cheered line regarding policy of the evening:
Climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They are a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it.
Reality is winning. Epic wildfires and Arctic ice meltdowns have flushed the climate zombies out. No longer can they camouflage themselves as our neighbors, friends, coworkers. Physicist and former skeptic Richard Muller, funded by the Koch brothers to prove that wheels roll better when square, instead reinvented the obvious. The public understands, on some level, that climate disruption is real and it is happening now.
This election may transform civilization. Every election is billed as The Most Important One Ever! since the last one, but this one may be real. Jimmy Carter’s Department of Energy was driven by curiosity, but not urgency; then Ronald Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House and the money from the research. The 2000 election may be remembered as the match that lit us on fire, or it may simply be an eight year detour.
If Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan win, the delays may be insurmountable: by the time the seas swallow the Florida Keys and Norfolk, Va., we’ll be reduced to crazy-expensive adaptation schemes amidst wrist-cutting austerity budgets. His mockery of President Obama’s promise to heal the oceans was, according to Red Stater Patrick Ruffini, the most tweeted line of his acceptance speech. And it may be remembered as the most ridiculed line in a string of falsehoods.
Environmentalists and climate hawks battling wealthy forces of denial cheer President Obama's simple statement: climate change is not a hoax. Nor is it a joke. We can quibble regarding Obama's "all of the above" solutions, but we must cheer the fact that the President of the United States has acknowledged the existence of the problem.
The habitat of those who deny reality is slowly being reduced to two places: obscure corners of the vast internet, and the halls of Congress.
That second hiding place is a problem. This election is a time to do something about it.
Related piece: Hat Trick! by A Siegel.