If the Migration To Renewable Energy Is Inexorable, Why Is It Taking So Long?

When someone asks me this question at a party, I normally ask if he wants the three-minute or three-day version; there are dozens of answers, each quite important, and each requiring some time to articulate.

One of the most important responses: science is for sale. Our largest polluters, e.g., Koch Industries, spend enormous sums of money each year to obscure the fact that the consumption of fossil fuels is having a terrible effect on the health of our skies, oceans, climate, and lungs.

Here’s an example that I would have found funny if it weren’t so tragic: the Koch brothers have apparently donated enough money to the Smithsonian Institute that visitors to our nation’s capital can now walk through the David H. Koch “Hall of Human Origins”–a display that deliberately misleads sight-seers with respect to how rapidly our species may be able to adapt to a warming climate.

If it seems unreasonable to you that money should be able to purchase science, you’re not alone. The concept certainly was not lost on Jen Sorensen, the cartoonist whose work appears here: