Our view: What's going down? Not temperatures, or AC bills - USATODAY.com

Here's one way to think of it: The atmosphere is juiced like athletes on performance-enhancing drugs.
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But the climate change skeptics and deniers — many of whom hail from Texas and Oklahoma, the epicenter of this summer's misery — rarely discuss the price of inaction. If you accept that climate change is occurring, such costs are reflected in higher air conditioning bills and wilted crops.

According to a study by Tufts University researchers for the Natural Resources Defense Council, climate change will cost the average four-person household an additional $340 in energy costs in 2025, plus $2,950 for hurricane damages, real estate losses and water-supply costs.
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Some 98% of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and is very likely caused primarily by human activity.
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Too often, climate change is discussed as something to be worried about far off into the future, so far that it dims in importance compared with more pressing concerns. Both the latest global data and the USA's sweltering summer suggest, however, that the future might be now.

Opposing view: Washington won't solve our drought - USATODAY.com

Many of the people who earn their living on the land and are most affected by the drought will be the very ones most hurt by "cap and trade" and similar proposals. Everyone, however, will pay higher prices for energy and for the things we buy. And because China and others will not impose the same policies, the net effect is that we would become less competitive, hurting our own people for questionable benefit at best.
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Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Republican, represents Texas' 13th congressional district.