SUN JOURNAL • September 20, 2020
Climate change activists have been warning for years about bigger natural disasters and more extreme weather. Now we are there. A freak summer snowstorm blankets Denver, a huge chunk of the arctic ice shelf breaks off Greenland, a record-setting hurricane season has storms pummeling the Americas like a boxer working a speed bag, California is burning and yet, where is any sense of urgency? Of national mission? We give a damn too late. That’s because Americans live strung between reality and its alternative, where magical thinking is common and facts-denial the law. Now the bill comes due, payable in currency of ashes and fevers, blackened homes, congested lungs, and death. And the payments have only just begun. ~ Leonard Pitts Jr.