Climate Change Meets Kitchen Table as Issue Gets Personal

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-30/climate-change-meets-kitchen-table-as-issue-gets-personal.html


President Barack Obama inspects drought-stricken corn with farmer Roger McIntosh as he visits the McIntosh farm in Missouri Valley, Iowa, in this Aug. 13, 2012 file photo

If President Barack Obama has his way, the conversation on climate change will shift from polar bears and melting glaciers to droughts in Iowa and more childhood asthma across the nation.

The White House, as it prepares to announce new limits on carbon emissions, is working to transform the debate from distant threats to issues of here and now.

Opponents are also making the issue personal. They’re homing in on the rules’ potential kitchen-table impact, raising the prospect of higher utility bills and job losses. They expect those arguments to resonate with voters as the country is still recovering from the worst recession in seven decades.

The struggle to set the terms of the climate change discussion will largely determine the durability of a key part of Obama’s second-term legacy and whether the U.S. takes aggressive action to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. None of my four fruit trees are going to fruit this year.

I had a bumper apple crop last year, and got a food mill so that this year I could actually can apple butter and apple sauce.

This year, one of the apple trees blossomed, neither of the cherry trees did. I saw very few bees, and I'm not seeing any apples starting to grow even on the tree that bloomed.

I read online where another guy said his small orchard was completely barren as well.

The 'kitchen table' impact is that ignoring climate change is going to lead to far higher food prices.

[pscot]

2. Blame Obama

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

3. He's way down on the blame-o-scope on this one.

Everybody who gets rich off fossil fuels is up there ahead of him. His part of the blame is limited to things like the 'all of the above' approach to energy policy, but that's mostly just words. Congress controls the purse strings, and he knows that if he WERE to simply come out against fossil fuels, Congress would override him and make him look weaker. So all he's got to be blamed for is usual political expediency, like most every politician around him.

Which is much less blame to take than the coal, gas and oil companies with their constant propaganda commercials about how they 'create jobs' and drill 'safe, clean gas', all the while we've got pollution in the water tables, spills everywhere and a third of the gas is being 'burnt off' before it even gets to consumers.