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  1. The New York Times CompanyMITCH SMITH, Tim Gruber3/31/199 min
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    The New York Times Company
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    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      4 years ago

      The big “tough question” here is this: why is the media dropping the ball so hard on this urgent, global, end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it story? The poles of the Earth are melting and the water levels everywhere else are rising. Dramatically. Fast. It’s happening in fits and spurts that are impossible to predict and accelerating.

      Every person I know has experienced the effects of this crazy thing called climate change, yet almost nobody I know is doing anything about it. I’m doing one and only one thing: reading. That accomplishes about as much as looking at a car wreck, although I do think it’s important to see and understand a problem before you can figure out a way to get involved.

      “Our levees are big and they’re good,” Mr. Ideker said, but they were no match for this new normal. “Every event seems like it’s higher. It’s higher water. You build the levee higher. And the next time you build it higher. You can’t keep up with it.”

      This exact same situation is playing out in New Jersey. Taller and taller sea walls have the effect of making the homes on the other side seem lower and lower. It foreshadows a tragedy of epic magnitude.

      The Grapes of Wrath is a good way to understand human migration on an emotional level. I almost just wrote “it’s not going to be pretty” but who knows? Maybe, in some weird way, it will.