He focused on fear. CO2 may make this change, but we'd like to be sure of that. And even if it does, he didn't offer any solution, and neither has anybody else. He ignored the real threat, which is India and China, and he ignored other more immediate environmental problems.

What this navel-gazing professor doesn't get, and what so many of the environmental philosophers I know don't seem to get is that if you can't get the attention of the average American and put it in terms they understand, you're just talking among yourselves and preaching to the choir.

That professor can continue to discuss it in the terms he wants, but in case he hasn't noticed, the attention span of the average American in their SUV with their cell phone up to their ear is pretty damned short. And thanks to the dumbing down of the American schools over the years and the inward versus outward looking nature of the American and his role in the world, he isn't going to notice India and China. Yes, they need to not get as bad as they can get, and they need to improve, but we need to improve now and we are bad now. So stop passing the buck to others and get to work here.

The "real threat" is here and it is us. Along with everyone else. (I wonder if this is a professor in an endowed chair--who paid for that position?)

SRS