The United States is an awfully wealthy nation, as is the United Kingdom. It shows in our lifestyles and it shows in our carbon dioxide emissions – we are essentially energy rich, not necessarily in production but in terms of consumption.

The BBC recently ran an article (opening paragraphs below) highlighting some research from a development organization, and the numbers tell a stunning yet very real story.

Airport CO2 rivals African nation

Bristol International Airport produces the same amount of CO2 from flying each year as the African nation of Malawi, an anti-poverty group said.

The World Development Movement claimed the overall UK-wide growth in aviation was undermining efforts to control climate change.

Over the years, the Center for American Progress has done a handful of work in this area, focusing on the paradox – the countries that have polluted the most will bear less of the burden from climate change. Meanwhile, countries struggling to develop are staged to suffer the most, and are extremely vulnerable to high world oil prices and subject to global energy poverty. Price spikes that some can easily absorb have the ability to wipe out years of debt relief and assistance to Heavily Indebted Poor Countries.

In CAP’s words, we’ve incurred a climate debt that we’re due to balance. Read more here.

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) just issued its September report — and the West and Southeast continue to scorch:

About 43 percent of the contiguous U.S. fell in the moderate to extreme drought categories (based on the Palmer Drought Index) at the end of September.

Here is the U.S. Drought Monitor (darker = drier):

Here are some of the drought records being set around the country:

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It has been a good month so far for climate science, and a bad month for climate cynics. It has been an especially bad month for those on the Irrational Right who, for whatever reason, cannot stand the thought that Al Gore has emerged so gloriously from the grave in which they thought they had buried him forever.

“So now ‘Algore’ will join Yasir Arafat among the list of noble Nobel peace laureates,” Rush Limbaugh lamented. By awarding Gore the prize, Limbaugh said, the Nobel committee has “rendered themselves a pure, 100 percent joke.”

A week earlier, Hillary Clinton issued her “Agenda to Reclaim Scientific Innovation.” As president, Sen. Clinton says, she would ban political appointees from “unduly interfering with scientific conclusions and publications”, tell agency heads to resist political pressure that threatens scientific integrity, and protect whistleblowers who tattle on ideologues who mess with science.

Thus, the Bush Administration suffered two loud and public slaps in the face for its suppression of science at a time when the world needs it like never before.

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So we’ve seen much of the so-called intelligentsia ignore the global warming issue when asked by the Atlantic Monthly (subs. req’d) to consider the greatest challenges to the American idea. But not all of those asked were so short-sighted.

You would expect the one environmentalist they asked, Edward O. Wilson (essay below) to get it right, but how about, a Harvard constitutional law professor and his policy analyst/linguist wife:

• Lawrence H. Tribe and Carolyn K. Tribe: “Our greatest national challenge is to reverse the profoundly misguided course the last two presidential elections have set, while doing three things…. Third, cooperating with the international community before it is too late to restore the degraded health of our fragile planet and to protect the well-being of all its inhabitants.”

Who else got it right, or partly right? John Updike, Anna Deavere Smith, and even Stephen Breyer:

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