When Sports Illustrated warns about global warming …

… maybe it’s time to start doing something about it.

I read SI religiously from age 8 until I was into my 40s — first for the pictures of my favorite quarterbacks, later for the swimsuit issues, and then one day I came to realize that SI has just about the highest quality writing and photography of almost any periodical — jock or non-jock.

I kept getting it long after I stopped reading the timely sports articles because the ‘off-topic’ articles were long and meaty and a joy to read.

I know most readers skip right over them.  But even if they only get to the second paragraph  of this cover story, they’ll get the message:

Global warming is not coming; it is here. Greenhouse gases — most notably carbon dioxide produced by burning coal, oil and gas — are trapping solar heat that once escaped from the Earth’s atmosphere. As temperatures around the globe increase, oceans are warming, fields are drying up, snow is melting, more rain is falling, and sea levels are rising.

I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth and read about climate change from political and environmental perspectives. But it was fun to see how SI put a sports spin on the subject. One of the examples they provided about how jocks are taking action:

Two years ago the men’s lacrosse team at Middlebury College calculated its “carbon footprint” (the amount of global-warming carbon dioxide its daily activities generated) and raised money to purchase enough renewable-energy credits (investments in wind power) to offset those emissions. The team thereby became carbon-neutral — a status also claimed by last summer’s soccer World Cup in Germany, cycling’s Team Clif Bar Midwest and the Vermont Frost Heaves, this writer’s American Basketball Association team, which rides in a biodiesel-powered bus.

Long-time activist and author Bill McKibben (The End of Nature) is quoted in several places. My favorite:

We’re still so used to the idea that we can deal with the forces of nature that we think nothing of naming our teams Hurricanes and Cyclones. In 10 years, that will be like calling a team the Plagues.”

Global warming in SI? I can’t help but think that we’re near the 100th monkey on this issue.

Update: [3/13/2007] Michael Shaw over at Bag News Notes (he analyzes media images) blogged about the cover, drawing Katina parallels.