Christmas tradition dictates that a child who behaves badly during the year will receive a piece of coal in his or her stocking from Santa Claus. This holiday season, Santa, along with Peabody Energy and Burlington Northern Railroad, hopes to get permission from the North Pole to leave, or at least transit through Whatcom County, more than 54 million metric tons of domestically extracted coal annually (coaltrainfacts.org), or 260 metric tons for each person in the county. That's a lot of being naughty, not nice.

Meanwhile, from Nov. 22 through Dec. 9, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in Doha, the capital of Qatar, allegedly the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. Don't feel out of the loop if you weren't aware of the conference. Corporate media provided virtually no coverage of the proceedings.

Thanks to lead U.S. envoy, State Department tough guy Todd Stern, little (no?) progress was made in negotiating a binding international agreement that would control the level of greenhouse gases being spewed into Earth's atmosphere.

President Obama: I was merely relieved when you were re-elected. Now I am mostly ashamed of your emerging policy on climate change mitigation.

Rick Hermann

Bellingham