Since late August I’ve bounced from topic to topic trying to decide which to resume writing about when fall arrived.

With keen interest I read what others I enjoy so much (Hebert, Coyne, Paikin, Gregg, MacGregor, Ibbitson, Mercer, and others) leapt back into action with following their respective summer sabbaticals. I get a kick trying to read between the lines to see what, if any, epiphanies others have whilst recharging batteries and resetting ones compass.

Mine was going to be about Austin, who in May turned 14, but by mid-August had matured in ways I will save to write about another time.

Next I thought to write about the start of the Ontario election campaign and two key strategy errors that could have been avoided, one by John Tory and the other by Dalton McGuinty, but that topic too will have to wait a few more days.

Instead, with morning coffee in hand, I am shocked to read Warming ‘opens Northwest Passage’.

The shock is not that it’s happening. Experts have been warning about this phenomenon long enough. Indeed, the shock and dismay I am experiencing has to do with something else altogether. Read this excerpt:

“The opening of the sea routes is already leading to international disputes. Canada says it has full rights over those parts of the Northwest Passage that pass through its territory and that it can bar transit there. But this has been disputed by the US and the European Union. They argue that the new route should be an international strait that any vessel can use.”

This is scary. The Northwest passage opens and the greatest concern, by even our own government, appears to be navigation rights?

Something is terribly wrong when fire erupts in the attic, and the first thought is about roasting marsh-mellows, instead of reaching for the extinguisher or dialing 911. Heavens forbid the focus should shift, once and for all, on what we really need to be doing globally to close the passage, not make it wider.

Have we really become so incrementally desensitized to every-day catastrophes, that even the threat of looming irreversibility impacts behaviour, not at all?