'Course, three minutes to Wapner.

Overdroid made a great observation on my last post-

Sure, and things are so great in Russia now. Also - I'm not to worried about the social pendulum as I am in the scarcity and environmental pendulums. In fact, they aren't pendulums - they are finite resources that won't swing or bounce back when gone (take you pick - greenhouse gasses, oil, water, or all of the above).

He's right. Finite natural resources may not be able to wait on the political power pendulum (PPP) swinging back towards those that are more friendly to a scientific approach to the natural world.

Jerome a Paris has a diary up at Kos today that touches this very issue. Jerome takes apart a Financial Times column on politics and global warming:

Politicians have understood that appearing to be at least greenish is good for their election prospects, but to them it's just one issue among others. The message of the column is there: that "tick the box" approach is wrong, and the issue of global warming requires their full, total and undivided attention*.

And it comes from one of the most influential voices of the London "beltway". Not a green wacko. Not a single-issue activist. A respectable, moderate member of the establishment.

Outside of a few uber-conservative politicians who stubbornly insist on reciting industry talking points to cloud environmental issues those of who support stronger governmental action towards protecting natural resources are winning the fight for the hearts and minds of the general public. We just need to translate that into legislative action. This is where we have to watch the clock.

But what about conservatives? The recent spat about Civil Rights that emerged from political ads running around the country might give us a hint as to where they'll be on this issue in a few years. As an example; two weeks ago the National Black Republican Association ran ads in Maryland claiming that Martin Luther King was a Republican.

Conservatives have a tendency to drag their feet and stubbornly fight the reality of a given situation until the last minute where they gloriously pirouette and claim the opposite position, the position they've been fighting all along, as their own.

In twenty years conservatives will claim that it was they, not progressives, that fought to limit greenhouse gas emissions and warned of a looming peak oil crisis.

Then we can pat them on the head and tell them them "that's nice."

As long as we don't have to do it while standing in three feet of water.