Weather Makers

I bought The Weather Makers yesterday. Being a person trained in science before I went over to the dark side and joined the humanities, much of the background material on the climate and geology in the book is not new to me. What is new is the degree of change in the global climate, even in my short life. I am freaked out. I already live a "green" life -- I take transit, I don't have a car, I try to eat local, I garden, I use energy-efficient lightbulbs... All that good stuff. Which means nothing if my neighbour won't a) do the same or better and b) if polluting industries don't get off their collective asses and do something meaningful about their emissions. How is it that the people running our government don't understand that if you don't have any food to eat, if your water is polluted, if the air is poison that it doesn't matter if you are employed? Employed doing what? If you're dead, does the economy matter? It is our government's responsibility to look after the electorate -- they are accountable to me, to you, to anyone else who voted them in. They are NOT responsible to industry and yet if you look at the pathetic measures to go 'green' in recent months by the Conservative Government, it is painfully obvious that the businesses and people developing the oil sands and the auto industry have a much tighter grasp on our elected representatives' psyche than you or me, or frankly, even their own kids.