Keep calm and carry on—Bill McKibben on the mysterious silence amid the tornadoes

There’s been a lot of extreme weather of recent. It’s almost as if the entire world’s climate has been thrown into disarray. But luckily the US House of Representatives and their compadres in the oil industry are here to stop us drawing any crazy links between record-breaking tornado outbreaks in North America, crop failures in Europe and megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan. But Bill McKibben does bitter irony much better than I can, as demonstrated by today’s Washington Post:

It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations." I'm pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.

Visit the Washington Post to read the article in full.