The New York Times proposes an interesting theory as to why many officials in the U.S. have seemingly marginalized the impact of global warming:
Western Europe often experiences extremes of weather in a uniform way, as when a catastrophic summer heat wave in 2003 in a half-dozen countries caused the deaths of thousands of people.
In the United States, which spans a continent, there is almost never a shared sense of meteorological misery — as was made vividly clear when epic snows buried Denver as if two winters hit back to back while the Northeast basked in warmth that seemed to render the whole idea of seasons meaningless.
Some climate experts muse that the innately variegated climate across the country might help explain why it has taken longer for human-caused global warming to rise to the level of a national priority here than in Europe.
