What's Next?

It's Trinity Sunday, with an outside worship. As I stood on the church lawn belting out Amazing Grace at the end of the service, I was struck by an image of a thousand firemen, guarding my cousin Mark's casket as it moved out of the huge church to the firetruck that would carry it to his final resting place. Amazing Grace was the final hymn of his service, and bagpipers were stationed along the way to play the tune and keep us all singing. Few of the firefighters could sing, however, because most of them were sobbing like babies. Young and old alike, firemen are deeply stricken when one of their own falls in the line of duty. Okay, to be honest, I was blubbering, too. Many years passed before I could hear that glorious old hymn without tears in my eyes. I did well today, sang all five verses with gusto, but my mind was drawn back to the many times over the years I've heard and sung that hymn. A jazz pianist played it at Irv Kochel's funeral. We sang it at my Dad...

I have to admit that as this day approached, when the President told us he would decide on whether to remain or depart from the 195-nation Paris climate agreements, I was not really sure what President Obama had committed us to last year. So I looked up the agreement, and I chose to take the explanation from Forbes magazine: The Paris climate agreement’s main goal is to limit the average global temperature increase to below 2C (3.6F). Over that, according to scientific experts, we will see more extreme heat, damaging storms, coastal flooding and risks to food security, Technically, the agreement is legally binding, in that it requires participating governments to accept and work toward the 2C threshold. But in reality, its powers of enforcement are weak: Emission targets themselves aren’t binding. For example, President Obama pledged to curb U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 26% to 28% by 2025. If that goal is not met, there won’t be any legal repercussions.  The U.S. produces ...