New Bearings

Tomorrow will be my last day at the Sierra Club. After six years with the organization, I'm leaving to become an editor at California, the UC Berkeley Alumni magazine. While I'm sad to say goodbye, I'm happy to report that Compass will soldier on in my absence, albeit with a new focus.

Come to think of it, it never really had a focus. You may have noticed that, from its inception, Compass's tagline has been "All Over the Map," which was meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the catch-all, general-interest, (some might say scatter-brained) nature of the blog. That will now change. The new emphasis will be unwaveringly on energy issues, and the new tagline will be "Pointing the Way."

That is as it should be, as global warming -- which is, at base, an energy issue -- has become the defining challenge of our time. Even without a stated focus, probably four out of five Compass postings were related, in one way or another, to climate.

The fact is, global warming casts a shadow over everything we care about: If you are concerned about wildlands preservation, you have to contend with the warming climate (you can't save the Everglades, to cite an obvious example, without stemming sea level rise); likewise species protection (consider the polar bear), environmental justice (think of the millions who will be made refugees as desertification and rising seas make their homelands uninhabitable).

The list goes on, and it doesn't end with what have come to be called "environmental" issues either. Jobs, the economy, immigration, public health, you name it -- the ramifications of the problem are such that it touches all aspects of life and calls into question our very survival. I know that sounds overblown, but don't take my word on it. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently added global warming to the threat of nuclear annihilation as a primary threat to humanity's existence. The Doomsday Clock is now set perilously close to midnight--closer than it has been since the height of the Cold War.

So, you ask: Is there anything we can do about it? Hell yeah, there is! Plenty. Will we do it? That remains to be seen. It will take not just ingenuity, but also enormous political will and unprecedented international cooperation to meet the challenge. So far, sadly, the signs that we will act in time are not promising. Still, we have to keep trying.

To paraphrase the late, great Bob Marley: One thing me know, you keep on pushing a thing, it turn over.

Thanks for reading. So long.