Let's See How High We Can Go

If you haven't caught the many hints yet, May is National Bike Month. (Enter bike to work month in Google and check out how many Washington-based sites are listed first. Cool.) Anyway, during National Bike Month we reached an important milestone.

There are many reasons to ride a bicycle. It costs less than a car. To enjoy a sense of freedom. To get fit. It's fun. It's good for the environment. The list can go on.

Yet how ironic that during National Bike Month the milestone we reached is 400 parts per million of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Millions of years from now, the next self-proclaimed intelligent species will be excavating our fossils and studying the record buried within. And they will be amazed at what they find. Sure, they might be impressed with the bullet trains, the tallest buildings, and that we had a space program.

But what will amaze them is that we, who seemed to be so advanced, cooked the planet and killed ourselves off.