Thank you so, so much for this. Climate change is the most serious issue facing the planet and it's arguably been under-covered in my favourite newspaper. When you guys have covered it you've done a great job (I'm thinking of Golub's incredible feature last year). More, please!

Bless you.

Dan Mudede, I like it.

I didn't expect this column to make me cry.

Damn.

Thank you, Dan.

And I'm with @1, it would be great if the Stranger could cover this more, please.

If a classroom full of first graders can get massacred without changing opinions or legislation on gun control, I don't think a few thousand deaths will change conservative views on climate change. Unfortunately, I think it will take years of cataclysmic disasters where millions (or billions) of people die before humanity takes collective, decisive action.

Dayummm... well said, Mr. Savage.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, once again with heartfelt feeling, well done, Dan!! This needed to be said.

Alaskans are going through a truly unnatural heat wave right now as
we speak.

Dan, great column. Also, I'm enjoying your new book quite a bit.

But, one thing. Please stop calling those right wing d-bags conservatives.

There is nothing conservative about ignoring climate change. They would label me a flaming liberal, but actually I'm a conservative. I want to conserve the oceans, the forests, the air, wildlife and the planet in general.

We have to take that word back.

It would be great to see this in the New York Times.

I'd love to see us publish more pieces on climate change. Truthfully, we get very few pitches from writers on this topic. If you are a journalist or scientist or essayist or, hell, a poet with something to say about climate change, email me.

Another one hit out of the ballpark. Well said Dan.

Bravo.

This is one of humanity's greatest faults that will not serve it well in the future: Denial. Inability to accept change, and willingness to exact violence on those who have accepted change and attempt to address it.

Those of us in the early 90s who realized that climate change must be true, and began to change their lives have lived quietly below the radar since then, watching the slow coming-around of the media and politicians. I can only hope that we'll be able to deal with the food and water shortages to come.

We don't have a lot of time to adapt our food systems to protect against droughts AND erratic July frosts, torrential rains AND increased wind storms. Will we have to survive on Victory Gardens once again, as the larger systems falter?

That said, I look forward to the moment that Las Vegas can no longer sustain it's profligate water-wasting ways, and the entire city becomes a ghost town. I expect that will happen in my lifetime.

Nailed it.

Very moving. I loved the comparisons.

Ouch. Anger channelled with pinpoint accuracy.

I just read a spot on bumper sticker on a good friend's car:

"Only when the last drop of water is taken from our rivers and oceans, the last tree is chopped down, the last mountaintop is stripped and mined of its resources, and the last fish is caught and eaten, will those in power learn that they can't eat money."

Thank you for a great and important essay.

Thank you, Dan. Please, more articles and posts about climate change! Awareness is so important.

'bout time and well said. Sometimes I think this newspaper's focus on sexuality and city life blinds it to the Wicked Problem -- the climate/ energy/extinction/overshoot crisis that we are now crashing into, full speed. Good to see that Mr. Savage is paying attention.

Dan that was f*ing incredible. Thank you so much for that incisive analogy.

Please try to get this piece re-published in more widely-read venues - perhaps even one that some conservatives read?

Because I am a regular Stranger reader and lib'rul (former) Seattlite, you're preaching to the choir here.

So bless you, Father Dan. Hope you and Terry had a happy Father's Day!

Wonderful piece. What a way to make climate change hit home in a human way. Denial is one of those human flaws that strike at the core of what makes us who we are. Both individual denial in our own life choices, and collective denial as societies.

I read this just after watching the KCTS (local PBS station) documentary on the coal terminals. There are so many reasons shipping coal to Asia is a monumentally boneheaded decision (of which climate change is just one), and yet the Obama administration and Congress seem content to move this disaster inexorably along the approval process.

Best essay I've read in a long time. Thank you, Dan.

I can't help but think the only solution is The Last Flight of Dr. Ain.

http://dynamicsubspace.net/2007/04/12/ja…

Good Job. That is a truly terrible quote from Pat to have stuck in your head. I've seen you on tv recently and I think you look hot! I'm straight. Rock On!

Just get them weed shops open already damn.

So conservative Christians and early80s AIDS deniers have something in common: an aversion to condoms. Looks all 7 billion of us are gonna bareback our way to environmental oblivion

Dan, been a fan since your "hey faggot" days. Glad to see you expanding into global warming.

ugh

At first glance, I thought this would be some tongue in cheek satire. But you are right. People are terrified about climate change, and when men are terrified, they lash out. Thank you for your intelligent and saddening essay. How brilliant to find a point of comparison between gay bars in 1983 and Colorado in 2013.

Brilliant essay, DS, and excellent analogy. Thank you. How terrified and reactive we are about global warming.