Global warming has a double cause. First is the one who started it, and second the one who is too lax to stop it. The two are one in the same -- in Pogo-ese, “We have met the irresponsible and it is us.”
In his special message to Congress in 1965, Lyndon Johnson pointed out who caused global warming:
This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
That was a warning to Americans to stop it. But Americans are a group of fiddling Neros, which Adlai Stevenson once put this way:
The trouble with Americans is that they haven’t read the minutes of the previous meeting.
(Johnson and Stevenson are quoted from page i of Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Bloombury Press, 2010)
For a brief biography of Naomi Oreskes, click here. For a brief biography of Erik M. Conway, click here.
For a brief biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, click here. For a brief biography of Adlai Stevenson, click here.
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