The Washington Post's Tom Toles well deserved the Pulitzer Prize that he won 22 years ago.
And, since then, Toles has regularly demonstrated why he should be in the running for another year after year... as he showed a few days ago.
As with so many other of his cartoons, Toles demonstrates the power of an excellent political cartoonist, combining imagery with a few choice words to send a message with great clarity about a complex issue. This cartoon is one of those where the message is truly multilayered.
- Toles is, of course, absolutely right that the "Fiscal Cliff" is a mere molehill in the face of C4: the Catastrophic Climate Chaos Cliff.
Perhaps two elements of the Fiscal Molehill cartoon might have merited a slightly different approach.
- The 'Molehill' should have been in the other direction, since it is distracting attention away from far more serious, difficult, and menacing climate issues.
- The figures should have been shown tumbling (tripping) over the Fiscal Molehill since that would be a far more accurate representation of the inept political gamesmanship and mendacity in dealing with the end of year deadline for 'fixing' the fiscal cliff.
NOTE: See Climate Bites for one collection of climate-related political cartoons. Another great climate cliff/fiscal cliff cartoon is this one from Matt Bors.
NOTE 2: Leveraging the cartoons in this post, Joe Romm has an excellent post up: "What Does The Fiscal Cliff Debacle Say About Our Chances To Avoid The Far More Worrisome Climate Cliff?
The bottom line remains the same, though. We aren't going to get serious action until we have our climate Churchill -- and probably not until climate impacts get so bad that at least those in the persuadable middle start demanding action (see post, "What Are the Near-Term Climate Pearl Harbors? What Will Take Us from Procrastination To Action?").
The fiscal cliff debacle primarily tells us that the recent election changed nothing for political leaders of either party. We're stuck with the climate status quo and, unlike our various economic woes, that is a prescription for irreversible, civilization-destroying disaster.