© 2024 KMUW
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Stories focused on energy & environment topics throughout the state of Kansas.

Richard Crowson: The Silence Of The Climate Change Denier

When the temperatures get above 100 week after week, when walking the dog makes me realize it’s going to be another 2-shower day, when I can pick fried green tomatoes right off the vine, already fried and I find myself smack dab in the middle of another blistering Kansas summer, I like to kick back and enjoy the silence.

Oh, I know we still have the roar and rumble or morning garbage trucks, a different trash hauler racing their motors up and down our streets daily due to Wichita inability to organize its trash system. And at the end of the day we have the deafening drone of the cicada up in our parched trees, doing their best imitation of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing heavy metal hits from the 80s.

But between those noises that start and end our oven-like summer days, I appreciate the dead silence. I’m talking about the silence that comes from the climate-change doubters. Our friends who back during the winter, every time the snow fell, every time the wind chill got below freezing and a puddle iced over, would say something like, “Where’s that global warming now???”

They do sort of reverse hibernation emerging in the winter to loudly mock the scientific community’s warnings about climate change, then during our over-heated summers they curl up around their TVs and radios, living off of the stored fat from right-wing extremist commentators.

Are we feeling the results of global warming? Beats me. Weather is cyclical as they say. But I’m pretty sure our gridlocked political system won’t address the issue effectively. We have to get right up to the edge of disaster, as the debt-ceiling issue tells us, before we do anything about our biggest problems. When it comes to the climate change issue, we may have already passed that point without even knowing it. Meanwhile, between the sounds of eggs sizzling on sidewalks, enjoy the silence.

 

Richard Crowson is not only a editorial commentator for KMUW. He's also a cartoonist, an artist and a banjo player.