Jan. 17 featured "U.N.: Climate woes could be costly" implying we got off cheap with Hurricane Sandy. Phew, I feel a lot better now. Seriously, one has to wonder what it will take for Americans to prioritize minimizing their carbon footprint. Is it the marketing? Global warming, too warm and fuzzy? Climate change might seem too benign considering the only constant is change itself? Do we need more horrible hurricanes, terrible tornadoes, wacky wildfires and dripless droughts before we can consider climate catastrophe?

Yeah, there's been progress with clean solar and wind power energy generation but when "governments of the world were still spending more money to subsidize fossil fuels than to accelerate the shift to cleaner energy," crossing the irreversible threshold is the unwelcome light at the end of the tunnel.

Bob Dylan's song, "When you Gonna Wake-Up," plays in my mind when reading the climate catastrophe reports where the news goes from bad to worse. Ironic that the United Nations earlier this month released a statement following the world's inaction of their repeated warnings, urging people to "Wake up before it's too late."

When are we going to wake up to climate change? The sad depressing answer is, in the not too distant future, every day.