CBS is the network of the elderly, especially on Sunday
mornings. All of the correspondents on “CBS Sunday Morning” speak slowly
and carefully, so we old codgers can understand them as we gradually awaken.
The host of the show is the charming (but elderly) Charles Osgood, who’s
eighty years old as of this moment.
And the show is followed by CBS’s “Face the Nation,” hosted by Bob Schieffer, who’s a
comparatively youthful seventy-six years old.
One Sunday morning last spring, Schieffer opened the show with
something like this: “Flooding! Snow in the Northeast! What’s with the
weather?”
It’s a perfectly valid question, with a plethora of answers,
all of them interesting. But it was his tone – his shrill old-man querulous
tone – that made it almost funny. He seemed to be saying: What’s this? And why haven’t we heard about this before?
Well, we’ve heard about it approximately a thousand times. I
first heard about it in the 1970s in high school, when the first Earth Day was
celebrated. I even spent a few pennies then to buy an Earth Day decal, the
money for which was supposed to go to some good ecological cause.
But here we are. The
atmospheric CO2 level has gone to 400 parts per million, the highest level
in three million years. This will have definite consequences on the climate.
And yet Bob Schieffer, who’s possible more than three million years old, wants to know what’s going on!
I’m on the verge of being an old man myself. But even I know
more than Bob Schieffer seems to know.
The climate is changing.
Grab your hats and head for the exits, ladies and gentlemen.
The future isn’t going to be very nice.
I’m only sorry that the old men on the Sunday-morning television
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