A resolution before the US Congress implies that global warming will increase prostitution. Cole Porter disagrees.

hear Ella Fitzgerald sing Cole Porter’s ‘Too Darn Hot’

John Brignell maintains a very long online list of things that are being blamed on global warming. Absurdities abound.

According to a Loch Ness monster hunter, Nessie may be one of its victims. The New Scientist tells us that climate change might make fish deaf. The Times of India reports that basmati rice may become less fragrant. Reuters quotes a Japanese politician saying that the final Olympic games may be those held in 2016, since global warming poses “an immediate threat to mankind.”

In other words, global warming is analogous to a Rorschach test. Whatever reasons an individual provides for being concerned reveals far more about their own assumptions and preoccupations than it does about the climate.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee now wants the US Congress to pass a resolution acknowledging that climate change is a women’s issue. Her resolution is six embarrassing pages long. Many of its claims are facile. Others depend on such a tortured and implausible chain of inference (to paraphrase meteorologist Richard Lindzen) they’re downright silly.

The document begins by declaring that women “are the linchpin of families and communities.” Yeah, well so are men. I’m a feminist with a degree in women’s studies. I’m supposed to be sympathetic here. But any text that begins by devaluing the contribution that half the population makes to families and communities deserves to go nowhere.

ClimateDepot.com has been making fun of the fact that the resolution implies that global warming causes prostitution. Here’s the relevant passage:

Whereas food insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health… [bold added; document backed up here]

Sixteen other “Whereas” declarations are included in this document. If a Congressperson with a working brain can be found who sincerely thinks that each and every one of them is an accurate representation of reality, he or she is further required to associate their good name with seven distinct responses.

One of these calls for:

balanced participation of men and women in climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts, including in governance positions.

To me this is yet another example of how people who claim there’s a crisis don’t actually behave as though that were the case. If the world is in such a state that the Olympic games three years from now will be the last, we don’t have time to mess around worrying about gender balance.

If the house is on fire, the flames need to be extinguished. Wasting time counting male versus female firefighters – or worrying about whether there’s an equal number of female fire chiefs – is insane.

Since we’ve clearly left intelligent life behind, there’s nothing to do but cite Cole Porter‘s 1948 song, Too Darn Hot.

Relax, sisters. Global warming won’t push more women into “transactional sex.” Everyone knows that when it’s hot outside, libidos deflate :-)

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