Teaching Climate Change in Sandy's Wake

By Laurence Peters

When asked what was the greatest threat a statesman might face, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is said to have replied, "Events, dear boy, events."

Hurricane Sandy's landfall late last month may have confirmed the wisdom of that observation. There are encouraging signs that the hurricane's ferocity, coming so closely on the heels of other extreme weather, may have silenced climate-change skeptics. Its unique timing—a week before the presidential election—may have had an additional benefit of putting climate change back on the national agenda. But, for how long?

Well before Sandy's destructive arrival on the East Coast, climate change had moved off the national political radar, without the mainstream media appearing to notice. It is not therefore surprising that President Barack Obama's proposed fiscal 2013 budget would cut the Environmental Protection Agency's entire $9.7 million environmental education program, along with more than $25 million...