I got a call the other day from some producers I very much admire. They wanted to talk about a series next year on global warming and I thought, why does this subject make me instantly tired? Global warming is important, yes; controversial, certainly; complicated (OK by me); but somehow, even broaching this subject makes me feel like someone’s put heavy stones in my head. Why is that?

There’s not much question the world is getting warmer. We can measure temperatures in conspicuous places (what used to be snowy mountaintops, vast glaciers, the once-icy Arctic sea) and inconspicuous places (ocean surfaces, temperate zones) and facts are facts: temperatures are rising.

The Many Causes

The question, of course, is why. And here there are a great clump of possible causes: it’s the sun’s fault; it’s some complex cycle of sun/planets and orbital paths; it’s coal, it’s methane, it’s smokestacks; it’s us — this vast, increasingly citified, increasingly prosperous blob of humans trying, sloppily, to make a better life for ourselves and our kids and in the process, making the atmosphere warmer.