the guy hasn't even started work yet

Poor Mr. Obama won the election and we all expected him to get to work at midnight. My good buddies at Oxfam certainly did. I get alerts from Oxfam from time to time on humanitarian concerns and climate change. For humanitarian responses, I fly with Compassion or World Vision. When it comes to climate change, Oxfam seems to have a nice response without chaining themselves to trees. Today I got my letter to send to Obama to encourage him to attend the Climate Change Conference in December. This I think is important and so I sent along the letter that Oxfam had written. I always make some editorial revision to my Oxfam letter. They do a good job but I don't think their reasoning goes far enough. Climate change is of concern to the US but not just because we want clean air for our kids. We want clean air for all of the kids all over the world because if they don't get it they will come for the people who have denied them. Poor kids go into gangs because of the promise of something better. Kids become warlords and terrorists because they want something better and they will take it by force if someone doesn't offer them a hand.

I take a bit of circular view on many issues. Our sick economy, the world's sick economy, world hunger, HIV/AIDS crisis, climate change, government stability, global security/ terrorism... add whatever else you can think of. All of that is connected. We feed kids in the third world and we provide them a stable home, those kids have a chance to grow up, think, make good choices and they'll live free in more ways than one. But they can't do that if they are worried about food, health care, or a job. I think being from the US is a terrific privilege but its a tremendous responsibility also.