CLIMATE: Check it out, Jay

“Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” (Charles Dudley Warner, 1829-1900)

Well folks, fear not. Help is on the way. The governor of our nearby left state has announced for president of the United States with the following pledge.

“We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change and we are the last generation that can do something about it. As president, I will make fighting climate change our number one priority.” (Inslee, Our Moment, Paid for by Inslee for America.)

Apparently Governor Inslee has lacked the pleasure of visiting the right side of his state. If he had, he might have traveled east on Trent Avenue to the Washington/Idaho border. There, he would have observed a historic geographic sign recalling the ice age wonder of the Purcell Trench. On that sign, he would have read the following:

“A long glaciated valley extending from British Columbia this far into Idaho brought part of a continental ice sheet past here thousands of years ago. Rocks and boulders transported here by glacial ice backed up Lake Coeur d’Alene. Then a gradually warming climate let an outlet from Lake Pend Oreille discharge past here — sometimes with catastrophic results. As ice receded, Kootenai River also flowed past here before lower channels in British Columbia no longer were blocked by a glacial barrier. In those days, this was Columbia River’s main channel.”

If we are to believe that we are “the first generation to feel the sting of climate change,” how in the heck do we explain the Purcell Trench?

BOB LaRUE

Hauser