It seems there is a cause for everyone and everything today. Most are real, and seemingly pressing, and many would ultimately be "good things" if successfully resolved. Most of us would agree that concern for the environment, equal rights for all, end to all war, right to choice, right to life, right to painless death - these and many more tend to keep us focused on our pet cause, often at the exclusion of something entirely more important.

No, I am not going to say "your eternal soul" or some such claptrap. I am instead going to suggest there is something of such great import that it IS going to affect you, and it is REALLY going to affect your children, and it IS going to downright cause great harm to your grandchildren.

I am talking about the issue of global warming, and the signifigance of great climactic changes on all subsequent generations, perhaps for the next thousand years. Yes, I know, most of us can't seem to think about the next year, let alone a thousand years.

But here's the thing about global warming - its already underway. Think about what it takes to turn an enormous oil tanker: a typical turn of ninety degrees to port, say, can takefifteen miles of more to execute. And try stopping one of those things! We are talking about enormous inertial forces at play.

Now, ramp that up, to something the size of the entire biosphere. You need to consider the entire oceanic and atmospheric systems and their intrinsicley entwined dynamics. Each acts to reflect, sustain, reinforce the thermodynamics of the other - they cannot really be separated. As goes one, so goes the other. If the oceans heat up, the atmosphere alters. Wind patterns, trade wind speeds and directions, storm patterns, all come into play. People, we are talking about the single greatest energy producer on this planet.

And we are really fucking it up.

There's another thing to consider here: to "make" the energy dynamics stabilize, or even reverse, will take a great deal of energy and financial expenditure to influence even the smallest part of the dynamics at play. How much energy? Lets just say more than all the economies of the world combined can afford to produce. All the current knowledge of global warming seems to indicate that the initiating factors began as early as the early Industrial Age, when coal was a primary fuel source. Coal released millions of cubic tons of particulate into the atmosphere, equivilent to dozens of Krakatoa eruptions over an extended period. And this was just the setup punch.

But here's the point, folks. We are only just beginning to reap the whirlwind, and I mean that literally. Katrina was small potatoes - whats coming, with extensive melting of both polar icecaps, Greenland and Iceland both experiencing enormous glacial melts, and glaciers hundreds of thousand of years old in Europe all melting, the oceans will rise, their temperatures will rise, the resultant storms will increase in intensity and duration, and folks, we are going to be in the shit. (The Greenland link will take you to a graph that charts the rate and extent of melt on Greenland since 1979. Notice the trend?)

Equal right for all? Yep, thats gonna do it. End to war? Well, it will actually trigger possible nuclear confrontations, as other countries blame each other for some or all of what is causing this new hell on earth. Right to life? Whose? If you live in Florida right now, you won't in the next ten to twenty years. A two to three foot rise in sea level will make major portions of Florida, and other coastal cities and communities uninhabitable, all over the world. Save the wilderness? The wilderness will become refugee camps.Plan for your children's future? Buy them a boat.

There is ONLY ONE CAUSE, people. Only one. Our future, despite the pablum and lies fed to you by this administration, won't even delay the outcome - no government can hold back what is coming. All you monotheists out there waiting for your Armageddon? Well, it won't be what your books describe. But it will be slower, more painful, and your religious fervor won't save you. You will suffer along with the rest of us.

But don't lose all hope. Sometimes the planet just needs to do a good house cleaning. The Earth goes on. We probably won't. Never forget - Nature Bats Last.