Eye on the Prize

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof was awarded the Pulitzer for commentary earlier this week. In his first column since the announcement, he wrote a piece calculated to get the government to take global warming seriously. Called The Big Burp Theory of the Apocalypse (sorry: subscriber-only content), it describes a scenario in which vast stores of methane are released from the oceans. Kristof is careful to note that this not the most likely scenario, only a possible one. But for life as we know it, such an event would be the coup de grace. And that, he argues, is reason alone to stop using the inherent uncertainties in the science (everything about the future is uncertain, after all) to start taking serious steps to head off the problem before it's too late. Because while the uncertainty will persist, the stakes are also incredibly high. It's an important theme to drive home. And, while Kristof is not without his foibles as a commentator, it makes the prize seem richly deserved.