We gotta eat. That’s what everything boils down to. The world may be in danger of catastrophic flooding tomorrow, but today we gotta eat. Regardless.

Let the oceans become barren of fish. Let the inland waters become poisoned. Let the mountains be decapitated in an insatiable quest for cheap coal.

In a year or two, the Peruvian glaciers will melt, driving Andes dwellers to the slums of Lima… The ocean will rise and devour the rice paddies of Bangladesh…

Closer to home, North America’s coastal plains face catastrophic flooding as Greenland’s ice fields crumble into the sea…

But, today, we gotta eat.

I watched a climate change program on PBS yesterday, and I wondered how we could be so insouciant about the obvious and disastrous consequences of the policies that now prevail throughout the world.

I wondered how politicians could still insist that scientists’ global warming warnings are specious. And I wondered even more how anyone could believe them.

And it occurred to me that perhaps the public does not care.

Come what may, their stomachs must be filled.

Perhaps that’s why the polls show American blue-collar voters favoring Republicans in the mid-term election.

Let the waters rage and swell, let the hills be carried into the midst of the sea. They are out of work today. And all they care about now is getting a job.

Perhaps that’s why so many companies are sitting on their cash, refusing to add to their payrolls, holding jobs hostage to force a regime change in America.

Perhaps that’s what the blue-collar voters are betting on. They hope those companies will relent if they get a government that will do their bidding without question, letting them pollute the environment and fleece consumers at will.

Perhaps those voters are right. Perhaps the jobs would be freed if Republicans win control of the U.S. government.

But there’s no doubt about the price the world would pay.

Tomorrow.