I’m not sure if it was more amusing or sad to see all the recent hoopla about “climategate”, the “amazing” revelation that climate scientists are human beings who have biases, agendas, and suffer from as much pique as the rest of us.

The question around Copenhagen is not whether or not climate change is real. Ask a polar bear, whose habitat is dissolving around him. Ask anyone who lives where there used to be snow two foot deep by now and instead there’s none. Ask anyone who lives where there used to regular rainfall, green grass, and crops enough to feed their families, and instead there is only dust.

Climate change is real. However …

Even if we shut down every single carbon contributing activity on the planet at noon Thursday (feel free to pick your own hypothetical date), would it change anything? Would it keep the Arctic frozen? Rebuild the Antarctic ice cap? Calm the storms? Bring the rains in time for next year’s crops?

Probably not.

Whether or not the catalyst for a warming earth was human activity or some natural process, the reality is that it is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. Your children and mine, our grandchildren and theirs, are going to inherit a warmer planet than we were born into.

It’s way too late to be asking “how do we stop it”? That’s like Thelma and Louise looking for the brakes after the car went over the cliff.

No, the real question is “How do we deal with the consequences?”

How do we address the fact that hundreds of thousands of people will need to be relocated from inundated lands over the next few decades? How do we negotiate land claims for places like the Northwest Passage that until now, were pretty much “passages” in name only? Are we prepared for the increasing spread of disease fueled by warm, moist environments that offer fertile ground for viruses and bacteria?

I do laud the efforts of the twenty thousand attendees whose carbon footprint is trashing Denmark this week. There is much talk of global consensus, of collaboration, of reciprocity. Indeed what else, after all, is cap-and-trade, once stripped of its trappings?

However, I cannot help but wonder – where will the reciprocity be when patterns of rainfall turn the breadbaskets of the world into empty cupboards? When medical supplies are unable to staunch the march of pandemic?

Shifting to “sustainable” economies and ”greening” our lifestyles are admirable goals. It’s kind of like agreeing with Mom and Dad that, for our next party, we’re not going to pour Jello in the pool or destroy the roof shingles by carting the bands instruments up there so we can hear them better.

But right now, the roof is leaking and the pool water is kinda thick.

What are we going to do about that?

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