Hummingbird! (Local Cooling)

Hummingbird!  Note that the lovely purple flowers shown here and photographed a week ago are now shriveled and falling:  we had a cold snap.  I asked a local how many more days of frost we should expect to have and she said "we never get frost here, it's global warming."  I suppose I should alert Copenhagen.

Actually it's no joke.  The local effects do help illustrate the implications of the global threat (as if further evidence was really necessary).  The many food-bearing trees Felix and I pass on our way to his daycare are suffering:  olives shriveled, citrus killed, the persimmons probably more chalky than usual.  And what exactly are the orchards of the Central Valley supposed to do?

I am cynical about the potential for Copenhagen to produce anything like the necessary change in direction.  I simply don't think either the US's political structure or the global framework for decision-making is up to a challenge of this magnitude.  As a species we just aren't that good at government, and never have been.

Beyond that I am extremely skeptical of the ability of regulation and incentive (for example, cap and trade) to produce the carbon-limiting effects thought to be necessary:  my experience with the banks has convinced me that regulation and incentive will be constantly undermined by the venal corporate instinct for gaming the system, especially in the early (which, given the nature of the problem, are also the most critical) years.  And, too, there is the problem of unintended consequence even where things work as "planned."

Not least, I am worried that even the more dire prognoses of global warming's effects are understated (it is the nature of the scientific enterprise to be conservative), and thus the unlikely appearance of a set of good policy decisions with good will supporting them still won't get us to a place of safety.  Not locally, not globally.

None of this is intended as an argument for inaction:  despite our depressing history of doing exactly that (i.e., nothing) it is unthinkable at this juncture.  No, I'm simply saying that in addition to these efforts and plans we are going to have to put a good deal of thought and work into mitigation, both of the source of the problem and of its effects.  A few of the more alert tree-owners on our route have cast netting about their fruits.  As for me, I'm off now to buy a hummingbird feeder.