About David Brooks' column, "Relax, We'll be Fine"

David Brooks’ optimism is well founded, but he leaves out one very important element, the real world or what most people call nature.

Sounds great until you throw in the fact that the "sunbelt" could be along the US Canadian border within 50 years.

Most of Florida could disappear under water and the American West could be hot dry and combustible. If New York, NY is around, it could have dikes surrounding it. Maybe the name will be changed back to New Amsterdam. The Gulf Coast and Mid-west could be too hot and stormy to be habitable.

David Brooks’ column concerns social and economic conditions and leaves the real world aside.

I call nature the real world. Being the narcissistic human centered animals that we are, we call the made for humans construction we devised the real world. The construct we made is comfortable and enjoyable but we live and survive here by the Grace of God or of the real natural world.

Maybe we can overcome an earth heated to temperatures not seen in at least 15,000 years. But it most certainly won't be pretty.

2010 is shaping up to be the warmest year on record. I don’t think it will be too long before even the Teabaggers are forced to admit to global warming.

If the ocean dies from too high temperatures and stops producing the oxygen we need to breathe, the earth will still be here and life will be on it but humans will be extinct. Hopefully, we will act before it’s too late to be reversed.


New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Relax, We’ll Be Fine

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: April 5, 2010