Romney's remark on climate change last night has occasioned a great deal of commentary.
Here's Kate Sheppard, reporting on the moment for Mother Jones:
"If you didn't catch Mitt Romney's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, you really missed an amazing snapshot of how he'll treat environmental issues as president: as a laugh line.
Here's the line from his speech last night. The stage directions are mine:
President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans … (Pause for effect, look of mild, mocking amusement on your face. Audience will chuckle here.)
And heal the planet. (Another pause for comedic effect.)
My promise (Pause) is to help you and your family. (Cheers.)"
She adds:
Did you get the joke? It's hilarious that President Obama cares about climate change and promised to do something about it. Mitt Romney will totally not give a crap about that at all, aren't you glad?
And here's a wonderful old Calvin and Hobbes on the same conflict between short-term economic gain and long-term sustainability, with of course a twist. (Click to enlarge):
Brings to mind a line from an old folk song: When will we ever learn?
Via Aguanomics.
Kit Stolz 
A great post. Don’t think things would be that much better in Germany. Our chancellor and the mainstream parties act like the USA, just talk a bit more “greenwashed” as Romney did and would for his voters. The german “green” party is a bizarre example here. They started 30 years ago with quite another goal in mind…and have forgotten it all while coming to power…a lame mainstream party now.
As Al Gore’s film came out in late 2006, there was a short hype in Germany after many years of indifference. The scientific facts that are known since about 1988 were repeated over and over again in media-fitting pieces. Well, this ended some few months later, people got bored, and nearly nothing whatsoever changed. A drop of snow – and you can bet the stations shout about “snow chaos”… Absurd, but well, people talk about it then for a few days.
Germany still builts oversized vans to export them, people use airplanes like hell for the shortests of trips. Cars and trains pay tax for fuel, airplanes do not… People overheat their buildings to feel cozy (“I wear a t-shirt in winter inside, dude, I need 77°F here”^^), build enormous masses of glass buildings in our big cities and forget that many of them are too hot in summer to walk in^^.
–>(“Oh, we have to add an enormous air conditioning system to cool the building down, hmmmm…”… Technician, rather silently: “i told you….” architect: “shuddup!!!! wanna destroy my work of aaaart!!!”).
We have a funny small so-called “eco tax” (a bundle of things, no real “tax”, but the anti-lobbyists called it tax). It excludes all the big companies who need much energy, he he. It excludes all the airplanes too^^. It is complete crap, the way it is handled.
But the word alone, hey hey, wow… they must be doing something…
Just like the USA and other countries we have a small, but powerful lobby who ignore the science of thousands of climatologists. They spread misinformation, and at least in the past they were extremely successful doing so.
Thanks a lot for another blog entry here, concerning the sound of Baikal ice :-))! I love to record such sounds myself, with not too great equipment, but it’s fun. At least, of course no Baikal here^^, we had the “Alster” frozen in the midst of Hamburg here, so I could, back in January 2010, bike “over the frozen water” for a day, that was funny…just starting was a tad difficult and I just had a normal camera, no video-camera^^. All the best to you!
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