Climate Change

   The U.S. has pulled out of the worldwide climate accord and is now one of only three nations that are not part of the agreement to do something about climate change. The others are Nicaragua and Syria. Nicaragua did not sign the accord because they felt it didn't go far enough.
   The president ignored decades of evidence by dozens of scientists as well as strong opposition by many of America's allies and corporations.
   He announced that "as of today," the U.S. was out of the accord. Nevertheless, he said he was willing to renegotiate terms of the accord and various trade agreements so they would not "disadvantage" the U.S. These changes, the president claimed, would enable the country to resume economic growth of as much as three or four percent.
   And Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, maintained that leaving the climate accord would "restore U.S. economic independence."
   Economists, however, pointed out that a three or four percent growth rate was unrealistic, if not impossible or even dangerous, since such a bubble will inevitably burst.
   Moreover, many of a certain age don't need reams of scientific papers to persuade us that the climate has changed. We can see it. Time was, we could go ice-skating on local ponds. Can't do that anymore, because the ponds don't freeze over long enough and hard enough to allow skating.
   We remember watching geese fly south for the winter. The birds see no need to do that anymore.
   We also remember a time when mockingbirds were never seen north of Virginia. Now they are in Northern New Jersey year-round.
   People in other parts of America remember glaciers that are far longer then they are today. And some see empty valleys that once held glaciers.
   Where did all the glaciers go? They melted, because the climate is warmer.
   Some even insist that the glaciers are really just as big as they ever were. These are the same folks who claim the inauguration crowd on the National Mall in Washington DC was bigger last January than it was four years and eight years earlier, when a different president was inaugurated.

   For these True Believers, no amount of evidence, pictorial or otherwise, will persuade them. The climate is not changing, they say. It's a hoax, perpetrated by the fake news media.

   Yet others, especially those of us who remember skating on frozen ponds as teenagers, don't need reams of scientific studies and volumes of comparison photographs. We know the climate has changed because we have seen it change, in our lifetimes.
   Go back a few more years, and you will find photographs of people ice-skating on Central Park Lake in Manhattan.
   So why go to all the trouble of denying a self-evident problem? One answer could well be greed. Reducing harmful emissions may be expensive, and cut into corporate profits.
   For such deniers, that's reason enough.