Bill Maher visited Sacramento tonight and gave a rousing show. He, of course, ripped a new one for the administration. But he made a comment that really hit home. The Democrats are weak at naming things. One example: "Global Warming." He suggested it should be called something like "climatitis" or the like.
I think we should call it "Scorched Earth." That's closer to the truth and certain to get a lot more attention than "global warming."
Bill has a good point. "Global warming" is simply not frightening enough. It sounds too much like something your mother would do to buns at Sunday dinner. If you live in Canada, you might even suspect it's a good thing (unless your home happens to be built on the permafrost). Even Al Gore's recent movie ("An Inconvenient Truth", with the accompanying
website) is a little soft-sell.
If we're going to get action then we have to talk about how Republican's inaction has lead to the danger of a Scorched Earth. We have to remind people over and over that a Scorched Earth means that Florida will disappear! (But now that I think about it, if Florida were gone, it could make it easier to retake the White House. Is there some way we could get a couple more Republican states to sink under the waves? I'm thinking long-term, now.)
Anyway, Scorched Earth seems like a very reasonable description when you have a house in the deserts of Placer County and the temperature soars above 100 F every day for a month (as it did in 2005, the hottest year on record so far) and is on track to beat 100 five days in a row this week. Even Sacramento was sweltering this evening. For poor Bill, who had to fly in here for his gig, it must have seemed like a trip to hell!
So, from now on I'm going to talk about policies to keep earth from getting scorched until someone comes up with a better term. And I'm buying land near Cascadia when I get a chance, too, because (1) it's well above sea level, just in case of Scorched Earth, (2) it's far enough north that even if the temperature rises five degrees, it still might be quite balmy, and (3) if things get really bad, I'm pretty sure that the intoxicants will be plentiful as we expend our last days.