A Fluttering of Wings

An old adage states that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the earth may cause a hurricane on the other. Small changes can yield profound results.

I’m thinking of a different sort of butterfly — the ballot type. About 17 years ago we were warned of “An Inconvenient Truth,” by the man who had been defeated in the 2000 presidential election.

What if that infamous Butterfly Ballot had been designed differently — maybe so the checkboxes for the candidates actually aligned with their names? 

The United Nations just released its global stocktake report that concluded we only have 2 years to meet the (already inadequate) Paris accord emission targets, and dire prognostications flood the newswires.

Would a Gore victory have made a difference? We’ll never know.