The climate of the debate surrounding climate change is itself changing with remarkable speed these days. It wasn´t more than a couple years ago (was it?) that columns like this by David Ignatius of the Washington Post were fairly few and far between.

 

I think the Democrats´ takeover of Congress is playing a role in the quickening pulsebeat of the dialogue about global warming. But I suspect the simple fact of mounting scientific evidence is playing a bigger part.

 

By "columns like this," I refer specifically to op-ed pieces by respected writers in mainstream publications predicting a dour future for the planet, one with ecological upheavals following one after another at shortening intervals. This one is simultaneously more disquieting and more plausible than many of the others I´ve read because, first, it highlights a generally underplayed factor, the impact that such events tend to have on our social fabric; and second, it persuasively argues that the first couple chapters of this dark future have already slipped past us.

 

Yes, the tenor of this debate is changing fast, and troublingly so. And all I´d care to add to that right now is that we´ll do our level best to keep up with it, come hell or high water.

 

What a day-brightener that was, eh? Sorry. It´s definitely high time -- as Sergeant Hulka advised in the cinematic masterwork "Stripes" -- to "lighten up, Francis."

 

Today´s Inbox Lighten-Up-Francis Moment® comes courtesy of late-night funnyman Conan O´Brien and Ikea, the quirky, vaguely cultish Sweden-based retailer that sells irresistibly cool-looking, inexpensive furniture that sometimes breaks a bit too easily and tends to be exasperating to assemble because all of the necessary hardware often isn´t included the package, necessitating many rounds of annoying back-and-forths on the phone and shipments of more wrong parts.

 

Anyway, the recent news about Ikea is that the retailer has taken a stand against plastic bag overuse by charging customers a nickel for plastic bags at checkout, and also by selling bigger reusable bags for 59 cents apiece.

 

Conan´s quip requires a bit more setup for those who haven´t shopped at Ikea. One of the company´s quirks is that it gives many of its furniture pieces anthropomorphic names like Aron and Stefan and Jules. (If memory serves, I think I once bought an end table there named Billy.)

 

Anyway, after that painlessly brief (not) intro, here, at long last, is the payoff. From "Late Night with Conan O´Brien," Feb. 23:

 

"The furniture chain Ikea announced that it is going to start charging customers for plastic bags at the checkout counter. The Ikea bags will come in two sizes: ´Glooken´ and ´Sven.´"

 

See you Thursday, Glooken.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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