field activity

I was watching a little Bloomberg this morning. An interesting moment occurred when Tom Keene was discussing the talks  going on in Paris. I wish I had the exact phrasing, but he said something like, “We really need to wait until we see the impacts [of climate change] before we can try to prevent them.” His tone sort of trailed off at the end as if the contradiction of that statement occurred to him mid-sentence. His point was, I believe, that it would be irresponsible to spend big money trying to prevent something that might not happen. They then moved on to the massive smog alert  going on in Beijing and how the health impacts of burning coal have brought the Chinese government to the table sooner than anyone had imagined possible. Unfortunately, he and his fellow commentators failed to put these two ideas together:   If we wait until we see the impacts, it will be too late to avoid them. When inaction risks many lives, the only prudent thing to do is act now.* ...