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Global warming has long been undercovered by the network news as the environment beat has taken a back seat. So any attempt to impart a fresh angle to the topic is usually welcome.
Usually, but not always. Mark Phillips' contribution for CBS' Saving the World feature was just tepid. First, substitute anchor Russ Mitchell confusingly contrasted a report by "US scientists" that warned of a ten-foot rise in sea levels from global warming with the United Nations' estimate of 16 inches. Yet Mitchell cited the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and assigned London-based Phillips to the story, who called it an "international study."
In his eagerness to add visual appeal to his story, Phillips offered a tourist travelogue--the Grand Canal in Venice, the Coliseum in Rome, the Parthenon in Athens, the Tower of London--to warn us about "the destruction of some of the world's most treasured buildings and heritage sites," not from rising sea levels but from higher temperatures, humidity and "moist salty air." Phillips concluded with this instruction: "See them now. Within 50 or 100 years treasures that have lasted for centuries may look very different or not be there at all." Frankly, there are greater obstacles to our global tourism plans for 2107 than climate change. Like death.
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