Tom McLaughlin: It’s not easy being green

Portland Harbor froze over for the first time in 35 years. That presents a dilemma for people around the southern Maine area for several reasons. Ice breakers are necessary to keep shipping lanes open. Ferries to the islands get more difficult too, but the hardest thing is explaining how this could happen when you and your fellow greenies — the dominant species around the greater Portland area — have been wailing about the dangers of global warming for decades. The polar ice cap was supposed to have disappeared by now, but locals are looking over their shoulders this winter for fear that ice cap may creep south and take over our state the way it did four times before — and melting the last time only 12,000 years ago. This month will go down at the coldest February on record.

Adam Souza's car was destroyed in Portland last weekend when huge ice chunks fell on it from a five-story building. "They told me my insurance doesn't cover an act of nature," he said.