Like an Alpen mountain stream

It’s a good rule of thumb that when people are choking on terrible local pollution, they aren’t going to care that much about global atmospheric pollution that you can’t see or smell, that doesn’t make you sick, and that has undetectable very long term consequences. When the air you breathe and the water you drink are filthy, climate change isn’t going to be at the top of your list of priorities.

This bit of photo journalism from today’s NYT, then, is a trenchant illustration of why the US, Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are going to have to act to reduce carbon dioxide emission without necessarily getting the developing world to come along at first. Yuck.