http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
Andrew Cuomo is right. Speaking on Rachel Maddow last night, the New York governor said the recent spate of extreme weather not only proves the existence of climate change, but demands action.
We now have 100-year floods every two years. So, there’s the explanations of “this is a fluke” and “it’s gone and that’s it.” I don’t believe it. There’s a frequency in these extreme weather conditions. It’s getting worse. It’s getting worse all over the globe. It’s getting worse in this country. and I think we have to accept the reality.
There will be significant costs — both in money (billions of dollars) and in human life, he said. The design of the city was based on weather patterns that existed at an earlier time.
When this city was designed, we did not anticipate this problem because we didn’t have this problem when this city was designed. And now you take our greatest strength, which is New York’s coastal environment — that’s what made New York New York, right? New York Harbor, Hudson River, to the Erie Canal, and you were out west. That was New York. What made Manhattan Manhattan was the underground infrastructure, that engineering marvel. Once you now say, well, that can flood, and you can’t even find a way to pump out the water, you take the greatest asset and you make it a liability, and it’s a frightening premise to deal with, you know? I think that’s one of the reasons why denial is so much easier, because once you say, yes, extreme weather is here to say, we have to redesign this environment, well that’s a big undertaking and it’s threatening to many.
Cuomo believes global warming has been driven by human action, but he is willing to put that part of the discussion on the backburner because dealing with the fallout is too great a need to be derailed by a debate that should not even be happening.
The death toll is increasing (in the United States and in the Carribean), the Jersey Shore is devastated (Long Beach Island has been shut down and is being patrolled by the National Guard), Staten Island is under water. And, yes, this particular storm cannot be attributed specifically to climate change but, as Cuomo said, it was part of a larger pattern.
We can pretend that nothing is happening. We can whine about rising gas prices and electric prices and demand the right to drive as often and as far as we like in cars that suck down fuel. We can build on and pave over the remaining open land, leaving storm waters with nowhere to go. And so on.
Or we can pull back, redesign our economy with a focus on local, redesign our communities to lessen the need to drive. We can opt for extensive conservation efforts and expand our use of alternative energies (wind, solar, etc.), moving away from fossil fuel and extractive energy sources.
Will any of this happen? Not as long as the coal and oil industries control our energy policy and the economy remains the plaything of multinational corporations.
At the very least, we are going to have to accept that rising sea levels, high energy prices and the growing prevalence of extreme weather events have become the new normal.
Hank Kalet 