Cities, Climate and Costs

Austerity and climate change make horrible bedfellows. Federal disaster relief is the crème-de-la-crème of climate-driven revenue support. Whether it is in response to powerful slams – like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy – or the reaction to interminable drag-outs of drought and water shortages – federal relief is clearly essential to many communities hoping to survive and perhaps “re-prosper” in these climate-altered times.  Research into hydrology, alternative energy, developing drought-resistant crops, issues concerning battery efficiency and power transmission and even disease control are also heavily dependent on federal research dollars. Federal dollars for interstate infrastructure build-outs and repairs are necessary but woefully inadequate.

Drop down to the state level, and the ability to generate the kinds of local relief is impaired by the tax-generation reduction from unemployment realities or the fact that most of the new jobs that have emerged primarily in the lower-paid segments of our earning power, has hurt states cope with basics – education and infrastructure being the giant sacrificial lambs. For those finally able to generate modest budget surpluses, debates on what to do with recent windfalls (California being at the top of that conundrum discussion) – reallocate to programs cut back in horrible times or put some money aside for the inevitable downslide – are tearing legislators and governors apart.

But by the time you drop down to the local, usually city, level, it seems abysmally clear that this is where the pain is the greatest. From out-and-out bankruptcy – the plight of modern Detroit – to total unpreparedness for climate-change harshness, cities seem to be the weakest link in our financial capacity to deal with the cost of these seemingly irreversible weather patterns of destruction. Struggling with huge public sector pension commitments made in better times, particularly to uniformed services, cities have decreasing discretionary ability to deal with the costly unexpected consequences of new weather extremes.

But old man winter seems to have been exercising in that big weather gymnasium in the sky. His strength has generated a series of polar vortexes and rolling snow and ice storms, carried by the “big dip” in the Gulf Stream which has itself been shoved southwards by high pressure systems (read: temperatures that are 30 or 40 degrees warmer than normal) built up in places like Alaska, northern Canada and Greenland, that have serially decimated the Midwest, the Eastern Seaboard and even the deep South.

As power poles in the Atlanta, Georgia area succumbed to ice-crushed tree branches and power lines that were never designed for such extremes. As homeowners faced exploding plumbing systems from frozen pipes – have lost the necessary power to keep them at a non-freezing level – entire city systems have collapsed under a macro-application of the same unanticipated pounding of weather extremes. And when you picture how the United States was built over time, you know that the oldest infrastructure, water supply and sewage systems started in the east, moving to the Chicago area and the south and then west, you can pretty much guess where the infrastructure systems are most badly in need of replacement.

“With revenues and staffing still below pre-recession levels, many local and state governments face a new financial strain from storm-related increases in spending on overtime pay, contractors and supplies... ‘Cities still do not have a lot of cash available, so this particular storm season is having a really severe impact on their budgets,’ said James Brooks, a director for community development and infrastructure at the National League of Cities. ‘We’ve also had many years of disinvestment in things like roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, which makes them more vulnerable when something like this happens.’”

“Stephanie A. Miner, the Syracuse mayor, said such things are too often overlooked when politicians want to spend money on economic development. ‘You don’t cut ribbons for new water mains, but that’s really what matters,’ she said… Northern regions tend to have older pipes and bridges, while areas farther south tend to be ill-equipped for snow drifts and subfreezing temperatures that can snarl traffic and buckle pavement. Officials around the country said the costs would be steep, but many said they would not worry about tabulating them until the crisis was over.

“‘We don’t ask those questions, but we do keep receipts,’ Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina said in an interview. ‘At this point in time, you’re putting out the fires.’ He said he expected to tap into the state’s emergency fund to pay for storm response. Local governments will also have to bear some of the burden, he said, and should not expect the state to pick up the whole tab… Whoever is paying, the repair work will be extensive and expensive.

“In Baltimore, 353 water mains ruptured in January, about one-third as many as in all of 2013. South Carolina officials estimated that a single weather system last month drained $2 million from the state’s budget. A 137-year-old main that popped in Lower Manhattan turned some of the most stylish streets in Greenwich Village into a temporary Venice, and a break in Boston’s Chinatown nearly swallowed a public works truck.

“Chicago budgeted $20 million for 2014 to plow snow and salt roads, but it has already spent $25 million. City crews are filling potholes at double the rate of last year — which means buying twice as much patching material for that purpose — yet drivers are still doing what look like drunken swerves to avoid yawning gaps in the streets. So far, according to the National Weather Service, the city has had its third-snowiest and fourth-coldest winter since the service began keeping track in 1872.” New York Times, February 15th.

That we are bursting with pride over our fracking-driven ability to generate increasing supplies of domestically extracted fossil fuels, taking big slab of pressure off the cost of energy but equally seriously deincentivizing the move to energy alternatives that do not accelerate the creation of greenhouse emissions from burning fossil fuels, is nothing short of shocking. How much more will we pay, in lifestyle and hard dollars, for not addressing climate change at its core? I would suspect a huge multiple of any savings we may think we are implementing by finding more oil and natural gas to burn.

Nothing drilled our massive stupidity home more than Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Vice Chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press (February 15th) and citing as fact, ignoring well over 95% of established scientists who have considered the issue, beliefs of a really, really few academic skeptics that global climate is simply a natural phenomenon that is not materially influenced by human energy use. That such idiots even exist is bad enough, but that they are elected leaders in positions of serious responsibility is nothing short of appalling.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it seems clear that as stupid and short-sighted as individual human beings can get, those traits become outright deadly when the apply to society as a whole.