Newspapers / The Chowan Herald (Edenton, … / Jan. 16, 2013, edition 1 / Page 5
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Serving Edenton A. Chowan County since 1934 ANN HOFFMAN Publisher MIKE GOODMAN 1' RITCHIE E. STARNES Managing Editor News Editor BECKY CARTER Advertising Representative A publication of Cooke Communications North Carolina, LLC “Reason never failed men. Only force and re pression have made the wrecks in the world/’ - William Allen White Time for the climate WASHINGTON — All right, now can we talk about climate change? After a year when the lower 48 states suf fered the warmest temperatures, and the sec ond-craziest weather, since record-keeping began? Apparently not The _ climate change denial- COLUMNIST ists — especially those who manipulate the data in transparently bogus ways to claim that warm ing has halted or even reversed course — have been silent, as one might expect. Sensible people accept the fact of warm ing, but many doubt that our dysfunctional politi cal system can respond in any meaningful way. The thing is, though, that climate change l has already put itself on the agenda—not the cause, but the effects. We’re dealing with human-induced warming 8 '' of the atmosphere. It’s just that we’re doing so in a manner that is reactive, expensive and ultimately ineffectual. Congress is being asked to approve $60 billion in emergency aid for the states that were ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. Strictly speaking, it is not possible to say this freak ish storm was caused by climate change. But Sandy was the second hurricane to strike the northeastern United States in two years — which, to say the least, exceeds the normal frequency of such events. And Sandy was part of a pattern. Accord ing to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 was “the second most extreme year on record,” with 11 weather-re lated disasters including Hurricanes Sandy and Isaac as well as swarms of killer torna dos across the Great Plains and the Ohio Val ley. The year was also exceptionally dry; by July, about 61 percent of the country was experi encing conditions that qualify as “drought.” On a cheery note, the situation was not as bad as the Dust Bowl droughts of the 1930s. Less happily, the lack of rainfall in 2012 exacerbat ed wildfire activity. “The Waldo Canyon fire near Colorado Springs, Colo., destroyed near ly 350 homes and was the most destructive fire on record for the state,” NOAA reported. Hurricanes striking where they don’t usu ally strike, fires burning where they don’t usually burn, drought everywhere — these anomalies begin to add up. Scientists have long been telling us that one impact of cli mate change will be increased volatility, and unpredictability, in weather events. This ap pears to be what we’re getting. We’re also getting heat. Lots of it. The average temperature in the contiguous United States for 2012 was 55.3 degrees. That’s 3.2 degrees above the average for the 20th cen tury, according to NOAA, and an astonish ing 1 degree higher than 1998, the previous warmest year. A degree here and a degree there might not sound like much, but these are impressively scary numbers. To put it in context, breaking the record for hottest year by a full degree is like breaking the world’s record for the long jump not by an inch or two, but by nearly two feet, as Bob Beamon did at the 1968 Olympics. To update the track-and-field metaphor, if all the years were sprinters, 2012 would be Usain Bolt. In some parts of the world — Alaska, for example — it was a bit cooler than usual. But preliminary indications are that in terms of global temperatures, 2012 fits the overall pat tern of a warming world. Of the 10 hottest years on record, all have come since 1998. The consensus among climate scientists is that this is happening because the concen tration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is nearly 40 percent greater than at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when humankind began burning fossil fuels on a grand scale. Washington Post Writers Group DISCLAIMER — Opinions expressed in the Your Views section are reserved for readers and do not reflect the position of the Chowan Herald nor have the published opinions been verified as factual. Your Views Generosity makes A Day with Santa successful Dear editor, On behalf of the Edenton-Chowan Recreation Department and its volun teers I would like to thank you for an other successful “A Day with Santa.” Thank you for any part you played, be it large or small, from sponsoring a child, donating food, money, and time for knitting hats. This year’s “A Day with Santa” pro vided toys for over 500 children in our community. If you can only image the smiles and wonder on the faces of the children as they sat on Santa’s knee in hopes that he would bring them just a little Christ mas joy. We had a great turnout on Dec. 21st. Not only did the children receive their toys but they also had an opportunity to enjoy an afternoon of games, crafts, face painting, food and music. None of this would have been possi ble if not for the love and generosity of ■ many citizens, churches, business and organizations through Chowan County. We can not thank you enough and ap preciate all that was done to make “A Day with Santa” 2012 a success. Thank you again, GWENDOLYN BROWN Chairwoman (chief Elf) and staff Reform nonpartisan judicial elections RALEIGH — North Carolina policymakers will have a lot on their plate in 2013. The General Assembly will tackle education reform, a rewrite of the state tax code, the un employment-insurance debt, and other pressing issues. Gov. Pat McCrory will propose initiatives of his own, likely to include regulatory reform and changes to the budget process. Nevertheless, I hope they make time early in the 2013 legislative session to take care of a lin gering legal problem: North Carolina’s unwise and unconstitutional system for electing mem bers of the state’s appellate courts. The current system is unwise because it de prives voters of relevant information and de duces voter participation in judicial elections. Some years ago, the Democrats then in control • of the General Assembly got worried about the increas ing numbers of Republicans being elected to the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Dressing up their partisan worries in good-government clothing, they voted to strip party labels from the ballot for judicial elections. They also instituted a government funding scheme designed to discourage judicial candidates from running real, statewide campaigns — that is, cam paigns that were privately funded with enough dollars to communicate effectively to voters. The trick was essentially to compel judicial candidates to participate in the “voluntary” scheme by punishing those who didn’t. Under the law, if you refused to participate and received significant donor support - or, even more prob lematically, your campaign benefited from privately funded independent expenditures - your opponent receive extra “rescue funds” from the state. It was certainly not the case that, after these reforms, the races for the appellate court,s became truly nonparti san. Both Democrats and Republicans continued to recruit and endorse candidates for Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. But because party labels were no longer on the ballot, and the government-financing scheme starved the campaigns, many voters had no idea who was in which party. That was, of course, the idea behind these changes in the first place. Republicans had been winning -judicial races, possibly because North Carolina voters thought GOP judges Columnist JOHN HOOD would be tougher on crime than Democratic judges. Robbed of this information by legislative action, voters had to resort to guesswork, or to thrilling moments of representative government in which they choose judges on the basis of apparent gender or a vague inkling of name recognition. Some chose not to choose at all. In this year’s general election, some 4.5 million North Carolin ians cast ballots for federal, state and local offices. Nearly all of them (99 percent) made a selection in the presidential race. , Almost as many voted for governor (98 percent). But participation in other statewide races was * significantly lower. More than a million voters, or nearly a quarter of the electorate, declined to indicate a preference for Supreme Court or Court ■ of Appeals. In addition to being unwise, the rescue-fund element of North Carolina’s election system also proved to be uncon stitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that a similar program in Arizona constituted an assault on the First Amendment. Because of the decision, North Carolina’s program was rendered unenforceable. But the law is still' on the books. I think state lawmakers should address these problems ASAP. They should repeal the government-funding system entirely and restore party labels to our statewide judi cial races. The current system is the worst of all possible worlds — nonpartisan elections that aren’t really free from partisanship. By depriving voters of a valuable piece of information (party labels) and using so-called public financing to dis courage judicial candidates from running real campaigns, the system pushes judicial politics into the world of super PACs and other independent-expenditure groups. Failing that, lawmakers should do the next-best thing: Submit a constitutional amendment to voter referendum that emulates the federal model by having governors ap point the judges, subject to legislative confirmation and perhaps a subsequent retention election by voters. Either option would be far superior to the current mix of play-acting, speech-punishing, and keeping voters in the dark. Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation Addresses NC HOUSE Bob Stelnburg (R) (919) 733-0010 Office: 306A2 Legislative Office Building Mail: NC House of Representatives 300 N. Salisbury Street, Room 306A2 Raleigh, NC 27603-5925 E-mail: Bob.Steinburg@ncleg.net Home,: 252-482-2404 NC HOUSE Annie W. Mobley (0) NC House of Representatives 300 N. Salisbury St., Room 501 “ Raleigh, NC 27603 1-919-733-5780 or 1-252-332-5463 ' — annie.mobley@ncleg.net NC SENATE Bill Cook (R) (919) 715-8293 Office: 525 Legislative Office Building Mail: 300 N. Salisbury Street, Room 525 Raleigh, NC 27603-5925 E-mail: Bill.Cook@ncleg.net US HOUSE G.K. Butterfield (D) 1-202-225-3101 or 1-252-237-9816 http://butterfield.house.goV/ Walter B. Jones Jr. (R) 2333 Rayburn HOB Washington, DC 20515 1-202-225-3415 or 1-252-931-1003 congjones@mail.house.gov . ■ US SENATE Richard Burr (R) 217 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 1-202-224-3154 1-336-631-5125 http://burr.senate.gov/public/ Kay R. Hagan (D) 521 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 1-202-224-6342 or 1-919-856-4630 http://hagan.senate.gov/ ■J&
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