23 July 2010
 
CO2


 
You can always complain about the weather- that is our inalienable right, like complaining is in the Service. At times like this, Brooks Brothers shirt plastered with sweat against the black leather seat of the Hubrismobile, it is tempting to slip into a reverie about climate change.
 
My pal Muhammed has been bitching bitterly about the intensity of the t-storms in Michigan. There is some crazy stuff happening in the West, along the Front Range. Rescue workers yesterday found the body of a missing rock-hound who was buffeted off  a cliff when a thunderstorm struck his climbing party on an exposed mountainside in Grand Teton National Park. Three parties were cut off and needed to be rescued.
 
A United flight out of Dulles headed for LAX ran into a wall of air- clear air turbulence over Kansas and thirty passengers were injured, one critically.
 
The bears are getting more aggressive, too, according to in-depth reporting from the local media out west.
 
I am tempted to say that something wicked this way comes, but the weather is not the climate, as they say, but the inclination to believe nothing major is going on is less compelling when crazy stuff is happening. I know how the air came out of the big Copenhagen Climate Summit when unprecedented snows chilled the Global Warming enthusiasts.
 
Of course, the other chill on the crowd was the tab that the Third World put on the First as the price of entry for cooperating on anything like a coherent and comprehensive strategy to cope with something that we do not fully understand.
 
That has cascaded down into this morning, as panic about the November elections begins to rise. I had my own little crisis this morning, but I share the pain of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may or may not be faced ouster in Nevada, and I admire his fortitude in staying whatever course he is on with all the distraction.
 
I had to deliver the Hubrismobile to the tender mercies of the dealer. The dashboard has been yelling at me the last few days about the left rear brake0light, and while not mission-essential, I figure the last thing I need is having a cop pull me ovr while on the way home from Willow some night.
 
I was stunned by the young associate who greeted me in the service lane. She was a redhead, lean, lithe, and possessed a balcony you could do Shakespeare from. I told her the car was scolding me, and damn if she didn’t just open the trunk and swap out the bulb, just like that.
 
“I guess you don’t want me to change the oil, then,” I said with wonder.
 
“We can check,” she said, reaching into the driver’s side and pressing the little button to scroll through the menus on the on-board computer. The number 8,900 came up on the miles-to-service indicator. “But I don’t think you need one.”
 
“I let her sleep in the winter,” I said defensively. “Check the date on the last change. It was last year, I think.”
 
I was reluctant to disengage from a woman this implacably efficient. She walked briskly to her computer terminal and dialed up the VIN number.
 
“September 2009. You will get a prompt to come back in two months. See you then,” she said, dismissing me. I was counting on a nice walk back from the dealership, but it wasn’t going to happen. I thanked her regretfully, and backed the car out of the service lane into the alley and motored home.
 
While I drove, I mused that she had done what I used to do on the long line of vehicles I have operated down through the years. Thinking about possible replacement, I looked at massive trucks, a useful thing to have if one is confronted by cleaning out a house with two lifetimes worth of crap in it, and cars to haul, and horse trailers and streamlining life in general.
 
Push come to shove, you could live in a super crew cab, but they take a lot of gas, even if they have improved the guzzling.
 
I got back to Big Pink in time to scan the headlines in the Times. Carl Hulse and David Herszenhorn wrote about the latest developments in the Times this morning, which I read before getting in the shower.
 
Harry Reid folded on the climate change legislation, apparently still bruised from the fight over extending unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.
 
We did not have a recession here in Arlington. Building has resumed after a brief hiccup, and I was able to sell my other condo in a month with a modest profit. Reid said he would  not take up the cap-and-trade carbon legislation which is intended to carve big bucks out of commercial activities that generate CO2.
 
Instead, the Senate will go after the legislation intended to clean up the oil spill <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/o/oil_spills/gulf_of_mexico_2010/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  in the Gulf of Mexico, and tightening energy efficiency standards.
 
It is too bad we won’t be able to have a discussion on the matter. It would be interesting to see if the facts match up with the proposed new laws. No one seems to have the stomach for it, though, and I certainly understand why.
 
I wish it were as simple as fixing something you can understand. I remember Colin Powell and that old Volvo he used to work on in the spare moment. He said changing out a headlight or a heater coil was something he could actually accomplish, as opposed to altering the course of something like the Joint Staff or the State Department.
 
I would turn it all over to the lady at the Mercedes Dealership, gladly. I wish I could vote for her.


Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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