The New York Times front-and-center headline yesterday declared “Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun.”

The article of nearly 4,000 words contained not a hint about prevention. Nothing about reducing pollution or changing our behavior that is causing the problem.

We all know we’re seeing the effects of what people have done for centuries, but mainly the past few decades and, since we can’t change the past, we’ll keep seeing the effects for centuries, maybe millennia. That doesn’t mean changing our behavior today is impotent.

In particular, if more people had talked about and implemented reductions decades ago, we might not be seeing these effects today. We might learn that reducing our waste and producing less carbon dioxide can mean improving our standard of living. Don’t you wish past generations, including people living today, hadn’t polluted so much. Wouldn’t you prefer our world could work on other problems than moving cities of people from flooding coasts?

Can we at least talk about reducing pollution and causes of global warming when we talk about its effects? Can we care more about future generations than past generations cared about us? At least they could claim ignorance. We can’t.

EDIT: Last I checked, they changed the headline to “Global Warming’s Mark: Coastal Inundation“. Maybe that’s just an alternate they’re testing. Not sure what you’ll see.

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