So much to say – beginning with . . .
I LOVE NEW YORK
Hats off to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, to 29 Democratic and 4 Republican state senators, and to so many others who helped (Mayor Bloomberg being another): New York State Friday joined Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the District of Columbia (not to mention Canada, Holland, Belgium, Spain and Portugal, Norway and Sweden, Argentina, South Africa, and Mexico City) in adopting marriage equality. Charles and I never actually wanted to get married. But we wanted the right to do so, if we ever changed our minds, just like anyone else. What could be more fundamentally American than equal rights under the law?*
I called my recently widowed full-service broker to sell Anadarko Petroleum (APC) this morning, not knowing how dependent its earnings might be on natural gas derived from shale – see below – and (because this is the sort of joking you can do with a full service broker, and one of the reasons the commission is 50 times as high) said, “Hey. You’re single. I’m single. Do you want to get married?” We’ve been friends for 35 years, after all. Long pause. “I’d have a really steep learning curve,” he said, letting me down gently and entering my order a point or two below Friday’s close.
*Or the right of churches to discriminate – which is an entirely separate issue, to be handled on those churches’ own timeline. (As anyone who’s seen “The Book of Mormon” knows, God changed His mind about black people in 1978. Maybe one day He will change His mind about me.)
IT HIT 117º IN TEXAS YESTERDAY
Bryan Norcross: “Following up on the Al Gore Rolling Stone article, Jeff Masters is the best online climate writer/blogger there is. Everyone should read his June 24 entry about how extraordinary the weather in the last 18 months has been.”
☞ Lots of great photos, too, and this conclusion:
. . . the ever-increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases humans are emitting into the air puts tremendous pressure on the climate system to shift to a new, radically different, warmer state, and the extreme weather of 2010 – 2011 suggests that the transition is already well underway. A warmer planet has more energy to power stronger storms, hotter heat waves, more intense droughts, heavier flooding rains, and record glacier melt that will drive accelerating sea level rise. I expect that by 20 – 30 years from now, extreme weather years like we witnessed in 2010 will become the new normal. . . .
☞ At which point, one assumes, there might also be the occasional abnormal year where things are even dramatically worse.
According to yesterday’s New York Times, natural gas may not be as much of the answer as hoped:
NATURAL GAS FROM SHALE
Here’s the article that scared me out of Anadarko. Not only may the fracking be poisonous, so may be the accounting. (I absolutely don’t know the extent to which these concerns apply to Anadarko – for all I know, this may actually be a great buying opportunity – but I decided to exit until I find out.)
Lots more to say tomorrow. Three Presidential Speeches, a tough critique of our financial system . . . maybe an acrostic.
