Morning News: Climate Change Bill Moving Through House

It’s 94 freakin’ degrees where I am today, and the rest of the Midwest seems to be embroiled in the same heat wave. Yes, it’s been a mild summer up until now, but days like today are a grim (for people like me who loathe hot weather, not to mention, you know, polar bears and whatnot) reminder that global warming is happening, and will only get worse if we don’t do something now.

To that end, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is pushing to get a climate change bill through the House of Representatives by the end of the week. It would institute a “cap and trade” program for carbon emissions and require power companies to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. Critics say it won’t go far enough, but something is better than nothing, right?

Investigators looking into that horrible crash on the DC Metro system found “anomalies” on the track in the crash area. Four circuits were fine –the fifth had these unspecified problems. Those circuits provide information to the drivers of the trains and regulate the train’s speed. I am terribly sad about this – I have family in DC and have taken the Metro train plenty of times when I visit, and I have always found it to be so safe and clean and easy to navigate. It’s hard to imagine something so horrible happening here, and my thoughts are with the people affected.

Since I have already brought down the room… I found out today that Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald died on Tuesday. She came to light in 2002 when she diagnosed herself with breast cancer while she was the only medical professional at the Amundsen-Scott Research Center at the South Pole. She and her colleagues treated her using emailed instructions and supplies son hand, because she couldn’t be airlifted off nor could much be done for her for eight solid months after her diagnosis. She even did her own biopsy, which I think pretty much grants you a lifetime “badass” pass.

I remember seeing her on TV and just being so impressed by her independence, toughness, and incredible courage in the face of what was probably a death sentence. Happily, she lived long enough to fall in love and marry. The cancer didn’t come back until 2005 and she did not get really sick until recently. It seems the last years of her life were happy, and I hope that’s really true.

On a much, much lighter note, is anyone else totally giggling themselves silly over the whole Mark Sanborn thing? “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” is apparently now code for “traveling to South America to get my freak on.” This story quotes a few of the emails between him and his lover which a local paper obtained in December and, just, well, click on them. The guy not only is screwing around on his wife and four sons (and did so on Father’s Day, nice!) but he needs some serious, serious game. Also, as a resident of a city whose mayor just went down for the same kind of thing, here’s my free advice of the day for any aspiring or current pols out there: If you are stepping out on your partner? Do not use email, texting, or anything else that leaves a permanent record to seduce the object of your affection. Repeat, do NOT. People will find it, and they will use it.

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