Take a deep breath. There’s more carbon dioxide in our air than ever before. Enjoy!

The colorless, odorless, heat-trapping gas was tracked in samples taken at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory to be over the 400 parts per million level for an entire day – a dreaded milestone passed in an increasingly rapid march towards melting polar ice, higher ocean levels, and global climate change. Much of it is traceable to our compulsion to free carbon from storage and burn it for our own prosperity and enjoyment.

Here’s a song about it from New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin.

Despite the songs and charts that try to call attention to it, climate change does not seem to capture the popular imagination as easily as space alien invasion, random street crime, gender identity confusion and the government taking guns away from law abiding citizens. This is inexcusable in a country that is so skilled at scaring itself.

I went to see Hitchcock’s The Birds at a movie theater last week.

Now there was a guy who knew how to sound an alarm. If we were able to perceive the increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere in the same way Tippi Hedren saw the accumulation of crows on that jungle gym, maybe we could drum up a little more urgency on the issue.

What scares you?