Every generation has its doomsday scenario. The invention of gunpowder was supposed to end civilization. In 1798, the Rev. Thomas Malthus convinced the world that overpopulation was outstripping food production leading to apocalyptic famines.
When I was a kid people built underground bomb shelters and schoolchildren practiced “duck and cover” against the coming nuclear holocaust. Later it was pesticides and food chemicals that were supposed to wipe us out (I remember spending three months on a brown rice diet).
Now it’s global warming, renamed climate change because, maybe, the planet isn’t warming after all. This July was the first since 2009 without a 100-degree day.
Apparently the ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising. (Curiously, the Chesapeake shoreline is sinking faster than the bay is rising. Is that climate change, too?)
What no one really knows is whether climate change is man-made or simply part of nature’s eternal flux. Nor do we know whether mankind, by itself, can reverse climate change.
But the folks who run Maryland aren’t waiting to find out. They’ve committed our state to an environmental austerity program that, frankly, doesn’t make any sense.
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