I'm now in Moscow, Iowa and it is not the cultural epicenter one might imagine. It, like the last State, just feels like another section of an 800 mile wide corn field. I am 210 miles from Chicago where I have to be for interviews on Thursday morning - which means I have to put in two consecutive 100+ mile days. The humidity and 90-100 degree heat are going to make this one of the larger athletic feats of my life, and I'm already hurting from covering 190 miles in the last 48 hours.

I saw something today which really got to me. I was at a stoplight and glanced in the drainage ditch to my right to see a raccoon which had been hit by a car. It was dying, and in a violent, convulsing fashion. Now, I have seen quite a lot of road kill on this trip; thousands of dead animals ranging from deer to elk, squirrels, kittens, possums, and even a brown bear, but this was the first time I have actually watched an animal suffering - and it got to me. It brought home how detached we have become from the results of our actions: it has become easy to think of our lives as detached from the natural world, that nature is somewhere we visit on vacation, that a hamburger was never really a living animal, that we have the inalienable right to consume as many resources as possible before we die to compensate for a lack of purpose in our lives.

That is why I have to say I'm thankful for global warming and climate change. It is an issue that has the potential to unite a vast array of issues ranging from deforestation to acidification of oceans, biodiversity loss, and move us away from the present rate of consumption of fossil fuels. Were it not for climate change these issues would be relegated to the arena of special interest environmental groups and likely not addressed until far more damage was done. Regional and federal governments, multinational corporations and small businesses alike are starting to see the light. Here in the States the supreme court (highest level of the judicial branch) ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the same manner they would regulate emissions of any other pollutant. This is an enormous step; it will set the stage for either a carbon cap or some other emissions trading scheme.

I am cautiously optimistic that we can meet the massive emissions reductions that will be necessary to limit warming to 2 degrees celsius above pre industrial temperatures. The UN's IPCC tells us that we will have to cut global emissions by 80% by 2050 for this to be possible. When you consider that we will have 9 billion people instead of the 6 billion that currently live on earth, that is more on the order of a 88% reduction in per capita emissions from current levels. We have no silver bullet technology (also here & here) that can pick up the slack of our fossil fuel driven society, in fact the greatest gains we can make today are through conservation technologies; the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado tells us we can cut emissions in half just by concentrating on efficiency. Without reducing consumption and focusing on efficiency, renewable energy sources will have no shot at getting us the rest of the way.