When I was a young Minnesotan of the baby boom, I remember a disdain coupled with amusement for the customs of Native Americans. Now many years later I have come to believe that among the most amusing of those customs – the Rain Dance – is indeed a reality. Unfortunately not in the beneficient manner originally contemplated by those Native American’s, but by an entirely different group using much less aware behavior to greater consequence. Now this new dance doesn’t promise rain on demand, but has changed the rain, the wind, the snow and the air we breathe. This new dance is fueled not by food, but by waste. It’s fueled by dead things, once alive things reduced to their elemental carbon. When you see a cloud of smoke from coal or oil, you must see it as the spreading of all those leaves and animals that died on the forest floor – going to mulch, decay, their elemental dead carbon filling the air we breathe. Breathing death. Spreading the air with death has repercussions. A few Souix dancing didn’t create rain on demand, but hundreds of millions dancing with carbon has changed everything. More rain, less rain, but not in the way that helps.