The heat backs up across the country, causing drought, wildfires, a mega-storm on the East Coast. More than 4,000 "hottest day" records have been shattered in the U.S. in the past month.

"The ecological ego matures," Theodore Roszak wrote 20 years ago in The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology, “toward a sense of ethical responsibility to the planet that is as vividly experienced as our ethical responsibility to other people. It seeks to weave that responsibility into the fabric of social relations and political decisions.”

Social change of real value is slow-going indeed. How do we manifest responsibility to the planet? A serious consensus is building across the globe that doing so is crucial, that the weather extremes of recent years are no less than global warming in action, the result of centuries of unbridled, industrial-age irresponsibility toward the planet, and something fundamental has to change in how we live our lives and sustain ourselves, but our leadership, certainly in this country, seems incapable of addressing an issue of such complexity.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A pool of flesh-eating fish may conjure up painful visions of pointy-toothed piranhas, but that doesn't stop countless people offering themselves to gentler fish which hungrily suck dead skin, prompting new health warnings about infections from mixing blood and water.

"It is the same feeling like a mosquito biting you," said Lomporn Chintee, 27, after letting herself be nibbled in a "fish spa" on Phi Phi island.

"It tickles. I didn't know there was any health risk. But I'm not afraid. I would do it again," Lomporn said.

Clive Helman, visiting Bangkok from England, said he was intrigued by the idea.

"I would consider having it done if the place was pretty clean looking. There is a place on Phi Phi where you could give the fish your full body, with no clothes on. I would start with my feet, though, and perhaps then give the full body treatment a go, despite the alleged dangers."

The process is akin to sticking your limbs, torso or head into a big aquarium which is filled with lots of small fish, and allowing them to tenderly assault your skin in an uninhibited feeding frenzy.

This past week, braving blazing 100 plus degree temperatures and universal condemnation from the local, corporate owned media, Columbus bus drivers and maintenance workers, members of United Transportation Union, local 208, carried out a successful two day strike against COTA (Central Ohio Transportation Authority).

The largely African-American UTU workforce had been working since November without a contract, and no progress had been made in negotiations until a Federal Mediator was brought in a month ago. However, members of UTU, concerned with safety and economic issues had set a deadline of July 1 to settle or to walk. The union did not want to strike but felt they had to take a stand for economic justice and public safety or, as public workers, they’d continue to be made scapegoats for an economic crisis caused by corporate greed. “Our members live in this community and whatever they earn, they spend in this community,” said TWU, local 208 President Andrew Jordan. “We are active contributing members of the Columbus community and we’re working to make this area better, stronger and safer.”

Apocalypse has been given a bad name. The Seventh Day Adventists are still around. The Nike sneaker cult failed to open Heaven's Gate. The new millennium brought us George W. Bush, not Jesus H. Christ. And everybody's terrified of "drinking the Kool-Aid."

But our species is living beyond its means. If we continue down this path, the planet, our food supplies, our climate, and life as we know it will collapse. If we bring population growth, consumption, and pollution under control, the damage already set in motion will play out for centuries, but complete catastrophe will likely be averted.

Nobody likes to be told that the end might be near. Either it is or it isn't. And the question is resolved by a personal lifestyle choice. Do I wish to be a pessimist or an optimist? Of course, optimist is far more popular. Even most predictors of apocalypse have actually believed they were predicting a good thing. The world was to be replaced with something better. Even our best environmentalists who understand the radical changes needed for survival guarantee they will happen. Harvey Wasserman says he simply believes in happy endings.

Our electric from American Electric Power came back on Thursday (July 5th) about 8 p.m. So we and our neighbors were about six days without power. We have been learned from the media that hundreds of thousands of households in AEP’s region of responsibility were without power following the big storm. The power outage coincided with a record-breaking heat wave that covered the mid-west.

Needless to say, we felt great relief when the air-conditioners and lights came back on. This catastrophic event, alas, is not the last of such severe weather events.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies monitors global surface temperatures on a continuing basis. In a report made available in January of this year, Goddard Institute scientists found that the year 2011 was the ninth hottest year on record, that is, since 1880. Nine of the ten hottest years have occurred since the year 2000. According to an article by Douglas Main for the Christian Science Monitor (July 3), "the first five months of 2012 have been the hottest on record in the contiguous United States." Temperatures in June and July are surely going to buttress this warming trend.