Has anyone else been noticing how, even though it’s mid-November, we’re still getting temperatures in the mid-teens here in southern Ontario? Environment Canada Is predicting highs of 16 and 17 degrees for Windsor this coming Sunday and Monday; it’s 14 and 15 degrees C for Toronto, so it’s not just our somewhat-milder Essex County microclimate, either. Jacket weather, surely, but I’m still wearing short sleeves underneath. By now it should be turning downright cold and we should be on the lookout for snow showers. And this is still just the beginning. From here on, climate change deniers are going to have an ever more desperate time clinging to their delusions.

On that note, there is some good news for a change, at least provisionally. There is a big push on to build a new pipeline called Keystone XL from Alberta to the southern U.S., to transport oil from the tar sands to where it can be refined, burned, and emitted into our already overheated atmosphere. The power to greenlight the thing lies in the hands of the Obama administration, not Congress, so for a few months now activists have been picketing the White House, making nuisances of themselves, getting arrested en masse and basically doing everything possible to draw attention to what may be the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas (to quote The Lost World). Thank God, they are getting results: the White House has pushed back by a year any decision to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to be built. That’s another year for the ever-mounting scientific consensus to push back against denialist propaganda and for people to see for themselves how our climate is changing around us. We might beat this thing yet. It’s just one battle in the giant fight against the destruction of our environment, but a good thing is a good thing.