On the Seattle Times front page, a sight for sore eyes. "British turn up heat on U.S. over global warming, By William Neikirk."

I still don't much like Tony Blair, but I like it that he hired Gore. I also like it that the companion article to this one says being green is seen as good by all parties in Britain.

If it weren't for the Iraq war, I think we'd be exactly there. We need to be. That means its up to us - the electorate.

According to an AP article by Thomas Wagner, "global warming could cost the world's economies up to 20% of their gross domestic product if urgent action is not taken to stop floods, storms, and natural catastrophes."

Read that sentence again. Think about the words "urgent action is not taken to stop floods, storms, and natural catastrophes." Us. Humans. Even when I grew up, even ten years ago when my son was growing up, floods and droughts and hurricanes were things that happened to us. Depending on your viewpoint, they were accidents, acts of god, or acts of nature. They were bigger than us; grand mysteries.

They were not things we affected directly.

And now, we are not only the probable cause agent for many of these events, but we are also the only entities (spiritual choices aside - handy, that. Hope it works.) able to mitigate it. Yipes.

I�d mentioned the Penguins on Thin Ice benefit I heard about last weekend. Here�s a link to it. It�s a fair distance away, on San Juan Island. But a nice destination and the Washington State Ferry lines are not too bad this time of year (I know - I've been on four of them in the last week, or more accurately, on the same exact boat, the Yakima, four times last week). It�s a climate change musical, and I�ve heard good things about it. It was created by Sharon Abreu and Michael Hurwicz (links to various pages on the benefit flyer I linked to).
http://www.thepenguinz.com/thepenguinz

I came home, having survived my last trip on the Yakima for the week, and found today's Seattle Times sitting on my doorstep. The Seattle Times runs Earthweek every Friday on page three, a sort of diary of the planet that highlights weird and interesting things, and events of note. Among this week's entries is one on warming migrations. Note that Glen Hiemstra, my futurist colleague, predicted that we would see the first large-scale migrations resulting from global warming beginning this year. I think he meant human migrations. This article suggests that 80 percent of a group of 300 animal species "have abandoned habitats they occupied for thousands of years to move to areas 40 to 60 miles further north."

In addition to being syndicated in newspapers like the Times, Earthweek can be found at www.earthweek.com.

I tend to talk about how well cities are doing with global warming. I mention (and admire) Mayor Nickel's stance on it, and how our own Council in Kirkland is stepping up.

I'm at a conference full of City and County IT people, and I heard a story that reminded me there is still work to do. The story goes something like "We were at a Council meeting, talking about how poor the water quality is getting, and you know, our Council - only one of them even thinks global warming MIGHT be happening and MIGHT affect us, and so he suggested we start a program to plant trees..." Insert roll of eyes here...

So talk to the people you elect.

http://flood.firetree.net

An overlay on Google Earth where you can set how many feet of sea level rise you want to look at. I found it doing research to answer a question about my next book. "Will global warming flood the Yucatan peninsula?" Not if I control my future sea-level rise to about 4 meters. :)

If only the real world were as easy to control as a fictional one.

What if we treated bicyling and bicycles as if they had as much right to the road as cars do? I know we're, sort of, legally supposed to do this. But I also ride my bike to work once in a very rare while, and I know many car drivers don't treat bicyclists equally. I'm sure some of them find bicyclists downright annoying. But if we really want to change our carbon expenditure, more bicycle commuting is one sure way to come down on the positive side. I've linked the title of this post to a great article in Pacific Northwest Magazine. A quote from the article (by Paula Bock) is "...you could see our city at a cultural crossroads � the conflict, really, over how to deal with congested streets, global warming, an obesity epidemic." If you are a bicyclist, or a driver, or like me, both, I recommend at least skimming the article.

I also recommend riding your bike more. I'd like to do that myself.

No posts this weekend because I was attending a songwriting workshop on Shaw Island, where some discussion of global warming occurred. No one doubted it, or failed to worry about it. Now, this was a naturally liberal group of all women. But more and more, I have the experience that almost everyone, everywhere I go, believes that global warming is happening. During the discussion, one woman mentioned sticks in the ice that show how much ice pack we're losing every year. Another commented on the large ecological footprint of cruise ships. I found out about a show called "Penguins on Ice." I think. I couldn't find information about it on the web, so maybe someone can fill me in? The show is supposed to be somehow about global warming.

Last weekend, I bought a copy of the October 11-17 issue of Real Change, the Seattle homeless newspaper, meaning to read it since it had a green headline. Well, I was looking for a charger that had buried itself deep in my briefcase, and found the newspaper.

A front-page article by Amy Roe wrote about a single Seattle neighborhood that is working to cut carbon dioxide and offset what they can't, or don't, cut. They're using NetGreen, which looks similar to the company I wrote about yesterday, terrapass.

Even better, there's a button right on the front where you can buy carbon offsets for others as a Christmas present. Pretty cool!