Saturday, February 27, 2010

Snow, Climate Change and National Debt

What matters a snowflake? Minute and delicate, blown this way and that, it's surely not worth a second thought. And yet, given enough of them, they can shut a city down.

Last week, the late night news reveled in the danger of snow. A tree landed on a parked bus. A falling limb nearly hit a pedestrian. The camera lingered on a roof line, supposedly imperiled by the weight of six inches of snow. Don't go out, whatever you do.

The news anchors act like they're watching out for us, but they don't seem too concerned about the other gathering storms, the depositions of CO2 and debt that will never melt away.

Numbers, like snowflakes, accumulate, each one of little import, but together transform the world we thought we knew.