Over the next few days the President is going where no president has ever gone before: Alaska. The purpose of the trip is to upgrade and cement his legacy as the first president to make any substantial moves to fight climate change. To borrow a phrase from the song New York, New York , if he can make it there, he can make it anywhere. Why there? For one thing, one of the prime engines driving CC is man’s use of fossil fuels. Just weeks ago, Obama gave final approval to Shell Oil to drill in the Alaskan Arctic for the first time in 20 years. Alaskans are accustomed to receiving an annual dividend check from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is funded in large part from oil revenues. In 2014 each eligible Alaska resident received a check for $1,884. To them, the President’s drilling approval is a big step in the right direction. On the other hand, CC is already profoundly affecting the lives and culture of people who depend on traditional ways of acquiring and storing their f...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.