At a time of incredible tension in multiple places around the globe, an offbeat thought comes from standup comic Julia Gorin, writing in the Christian Science Monitor today:  “People fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV.”

That’s Gorin’s explanation for comments about climate change from the likes of Al Gore, who has called it a “planetary emergency.”

The idea happens to comes out on a day when NOAA tells us that the first half of 2006 was the warmest in the United States since good record-keeping began in the late 1800s. Any good scientists will tell you that a single stretch of time is not necessarily a trend. But then last year as pretty warm, too—the hottest on record globally.

Find out here what a dozen big thinkers have to say about it all.