Meanwhile, as the world turns...

While the current political campaign is important and certainly absorbing, but it's worth mentioning that while all that money and all those words are being thrown around, the American economy is falling fast, oil has shot up beyond $1.10 a barrel and gas prices are moving up as well, unemployment is up, the stock market is tanking, consumer spending is way down, and at least one big bank is in danger of failing.

In case anyone has forgotten, Bush is still President, and besides warbling tasteless country song parodies about the Iraq war, he's the apparent leader of an administration that is still doing its damndest to screw civil liberties and ruin the air and the climate.

As for the Climate Crisis, scientists are signalling a new urgency. A Washington Post article last week said, these scientists say new studies indicate that the situation is so dire that the world needs to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades... Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.

As a further sign of what kind of creek we're up, the EU has been struggling mightily to get agreement on a plan to cut emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020, which is a start, but hardly enough. The hope has been that in creating and institutionalizing the changes necessary to do that much, there will be greater change and infrastructure to do what really needs to be done--an 80% reduction by 2050. Except, of course, these scientists are saying even that may not be enough.

And of course, the US is not even close to doing what the EU wants to do. Both Dem candidates talk about green jobs and green energy, with Barack Obama making it his first campaign issue in Pennsylvania. He's calling for a 10 year effort of investment. This to me is a primary reason I'm backing Obama. It will take transformative leadership, able to make sense to people across party and ideological lines, with enough of an elected power base in Washington and elsewhere to get it done. He has the better chance of doing that, by a long shot. Frankly, it may not be a great chance. But it's possible. With Hillary, not so much.