SANTA’S PROBLEMS ARE OUR PROBLEMS.
Written by Paul R. Epstein to
The New York Times,
November 29, 2004.

To the editor:
“A foreboding thaw” (editorial, 27 Nov) is aptly named, because the implications of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment go far beyond the Arctic.

For two million years Earth has alternated between two states: one with large, the other with medium size North Polar caps. But Santa's home has lost half its thickness in three decades and Greenland is melting 10 times faster than it was just four years ago. In Greenland meltwater [water from melting snow or ice— is seeping through crevasses, lubricating the ice sheet's base, accelerating ‘rivers of ice’ and increasing the potential for a portion to slip.

The Arctic Assessment is about the state of the global climate and we are rapidly heading towards a small North Polar Cap; a conditions of eons past. Let’s hope the inevitable surprises wake us but do not swamp us.

— Sincerely yours,
—Paul R. Epstein, M.D., M.P.H.
—Associate Director, Center for Health
—and the Global Environment
—Harvard Medical School Boston

EDITOR’S NOTE:
The Arctic Council, which sponsored the 2004 “Arctic Assessment” study of global warming is “is a high-level forum for cooperation, coordination and interaction between Arctic states, indigenous communities and other Arctic residents.”

Presently chaired by Norway, other member states are: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, the Russian Federation and the United States. Indigenous memberships include the: Aleut International Association, Arctic Athabaskan Council, Gwich‘in Council International, Inuit Circumpolar Conference, and the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North Saami Council. See: http://arctic-council.org

THE STANDARDS OF IRRATIONALITY
Written by Corey Robin to
The Washington Post,
September 8, 2004

To the Editor:
Anne Applebaum (in “The Irrationality of Terror,” 09/08/04) claims that “no intellectual line of reasoning, no political logic” can explain the Chechen terrorist murders at the Beslan school in Russia. Why? Because, writes Applebaum, the murders will not achieve the professed aim of their perpetrators—Chechen independence—and will probably only achieve the opposite: a hardening of Russia’s position. Only “an emotional explanation” of the terrorists’ motivations, Applebaum concludes, can help us make sense of their acts.

By that logic, the Bush Administration’s foreign policy must also be inspired by emotion rather than reason. After all, according to most reports, the war on terrorism has not decreased terrorism against the United States. Instead, it has aroused anti-Americanism throughout the world and, according to Donald Rumsfeld, may be producing terrorists at a faster rate than it is defeating them.

Nor has the war in Iraq brought democracy to that country or to the Middle East, as the Bush Administration promised. Quite the opposite. Unless we are willing to have the same standards applied to the actions of our leaders, it serves little purpose to treat terrorism as a psychopathology or form of “irrationality.”

—Sincerely,
—Corey Robin
—Brooklyn, NY