But there's no global warming, right?

WRONG.

Have you looked at one of those weather maps of the United States lately? The last time I looked, the entire country was blazing hot (color-coded red/orange/yellow), even placed that are usually cool, like the San Francisco Bay Area.

We have a weather station in the dining room, with three satellite sensors (one in the attic, one in the garage/workshop and one under the clematis arbor in the back yard). Thanks to the heat pump we had installed last autumn, the temperature inside our house has stayed close to 75 degrees. But in the late afternoon, when I woke from my usual afternoon rest/nap and checked the temps, it was ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY degrees in the attic and ONE HUNDRED AND NINE in the back yard.

I haven't lived in Portland all that long, but I have to think this isn't normal summer weather. I know for sure that temps nearing 100 degrees isn't 'normal' for San Francisco, where the fog usually acts as a natural air conditioning unit, cooling most of the city and large swatches of the East Bay (including our old neighborhood). This is the second time in two months that we've experienced temps topping 100 degrees, and it SUCKS.

Believe me, I know how lucky I am. Our home is cool and comfortable, and the Pacific Northwest has enough power to get us through this heat wave without brownouts or worse.

But what if this is the new 'normal'? What if the arrogance and refusal to accept scientific data that exemplifies so many of our elected officials, and our collective unwillingness to take the steps necessary to curb global warming -- what if it's too damned late?

This is the ultimate folly of the so-called 'me generation', isn't it? Who cares about what happens to our kids and grandkids, or to the glaciers, or to the salmon, or to songbirds. Who cares if there are tsunamis in Indonesia or hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. As long as I'M okay, it doesn't matter, right?

Bullshit. It matters -- big time.