Change We Can Believe In?

Greetings. This is our final post for 2008, the tenth warmest year on record. Here's wishing our readers a happy holiday, and we look forward to more grokking in 2009. Now, with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore ....

'Twas a week before New Years, when all through the land
Everyone was waiting to greet the new man --
The president who says he'll bring change far and wide.
Let's hope on the environment he'll start turning the tide.

Our children, you see, face a difficult future,
A hot planet won't mean just a whole lot less couture;
Warm climes will mean change, the kind we're not really wanting --
More heat waves, wild weather, and things far more daunting,

Get used to Katrinas but even more brutal
(Hardly a favorite like crisp apple streudel).
Speaking of produce, expect difficult yields
Some fertile lands now will be tomorrow's dried fields.

Expect more long, hard droughts, of biblical proportions,
And as coastlines move in, don't forget about the oceans.
Our seas, the wet home to marvelous critters,
Are heating and rising so fast, it gives me the jitters.

Fish, used to warm waters, are starting to boil
So they're migrating north, in a kind of evolutionary foil.
They're trying to survive by beating the heat
But as the Arctic warms up, that's a much bigger feat.

And speaking of the poles, especially the north one of St. Nick,
The changes up there are so severe and so quick
Polar bears are finding it harder to eat well,
For the ice they that they hunt on is melting like hell.

And those lovable deer -- Dasher! Dancer! Prancer! Vixen!
Can't take high summer temps -- they're in a terrible fix, and
The same's true for the rest, they're not likely to survive
In an increasingly warm place with too little food to keep them alive.

So, you see, we are clamoring for a new kind of change
So the climate change crisis we can start to rearrange
And start doing things right, take a whole new "green" path
So we won't have to see a planet in its aftermath.

The new president brings hope -- and let's hope he'll resolve
To tackle energy issues and get global warming solved.
Sure, economic issues are first on his plate,
But Mr President-elect, sir, the climate won't wait.