Why so glum?

This article was published on 03.15.12

(Come friend Aunt Ruthie on Facebook and let’s hang out.)

And yes, it’s March in Climate Change America, and spring is in the air! Doesn’t it feel like love? Like shorts and sandals and margaritas by the river? Why, maybe this is the month when Auntie Ruth writes her magnum musical: Springtime for Santorum in Michigan.

La la!

La La la!

La La!

But then, that’s already been done! More or less! Goodness me, and oh well!

But as the Republicans continue their long-suffering revelation of Tourette’s syndrome—it’s a family-wide affliction, from Rick Santorum’s equating the desire for a college education with snobbery, to Mitt Romney’s offhand remarks about Cadillacs and $10,000 wagers, to Ron Paul’s assertion that the free market can regulate new drugs as they come to market, to pretty much anything that comes out of Newt Gingrich’s mouth—Auntie Ruth says never mind all that. Let’s put our minds on the positive! Put your toes in the wading pool and wiggle, wiggle, wiggle! Let all the babies run on the lawn and grass-stain their diapers and giggle in the soft air!

It’s springtime in March, and Auntie Ruth feels fine!

It was, after all, America’s fourth-warmest January in documented history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (This has probably fed the low, low number of influenza cases this year, according to The New York Times.) And, as Bill McKibben detailed in these pages last month, Jeff Masters, “the Web’s most widely read meteorologist … thinks it likely [that the first week in January will prove] ‘the driest first week in recorded U.S. history.’”

This, after 2011 and 14 weather disasters (each costing $1 billion or more). The old record, according to McKibben, was nine. Recent images of Midwestern tornadoes followed immediately by snowfall come to mind.

And while Europe has a few things over Northern California—really, it does—they can’t claim balm, not this winter. According to meteorologist Paul Yeager, hundreds of Eastern Europeans have died in the current spate of brutal weather, many of them homeless. “In Romania, thousands are isolated due to closed roads … in parts of the Balkans, residents have had to dig tunnels in snow as deep as 15 feet to get out of their homes.”

Really?

Oh, my. Not here. Not now. Not us.

Springtime in Climate Change America. Why so glum?