Warming Doesn’t Bother Me, Just Turn Up The A/C

Expensive news, everyone: The worldwide cost of the melting Arctic ice may total up to $60 trillion dollars, according to a University of Cambridge study.

That’s nearly a year’s worth of global economic output we’ll all have to spend coping with the extreme weather and other climate-changing impacts triggered by the now unfrozen methane hovering in the atmosphere.

Is the world ready for this? No.

The global response to the emergency wrought by climate change is in tatters. The most recent major disappointment came in Doha, Qatar, as the latest yearly UN-hosted global warming summit proved to be yet another dud at the end of last year.

While the alternatives that could stave off catastrophic climate change are self-evident, not enough countries and individuals are ready to implement them.

Poor, struggling nations finally breaking into the modern world see that the rich countries got where they are today by burning wood, coal, oil, and gas with abandon. Now that they’ve taken what they want from the environment, wealthy nations are ineffectively telling the less developed to “do as I say, not as I do.”

By and large, the people of wasteful nations like ours agree with the tycoons. If cutting back on fossil fuels means making sacrifices, well, maybe not now.