Maui going up in flames
The strangest position from many of those in government and their supporters is that the belief that cutting the federal and state budgets … culling all those “unnecessary” and “woke” commitments to challenge and reduce global warming, including those job-creating infrastructure and automobile incentives toward alternative energy… is absolutely prudent in the name of fiscal responsibility. The necessary implementing rules and regulations, they believe, also hurt businesses and result in a massive reduction in jobs. Wow! Add to that the suffering those rich fat cats making all that money will impose on their own children and their future generations, but then, if enough people believe that climate change is a hoax, they won’t even have to worry.
Let’s dive a bit into history, focusing on what was necessary to counter the Great Depression that began with the stock market crash in 1929. Between the Depression and the Dust Bowl (farming-induced climate change of the 1930s), millions of Americans lost their livelihoods. Unemployed masses begged for food, looking for any kind of work. Newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, pushed back against his Republican predecessor’s (Herbert Hoover – 1929-1933) laissez faire attitude that focused on just letting market forces solve the problem.
FDR believed that the Depression was so severe that it would not adjust anytime soon. Instead, he instituted the greatest job creation program in American history. The New Deal. The Civilian Conservation Corps. With fixing and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, millions of Americans found dignity and work. The result? Massive new sources of hydroelectric power, upgraded national parks and government buildings. New roads. A much better America. Well, it does seem as if fostering developing infrastructure, along with shifting to alternative energy, would have the opposite effect of costs us jobs; it has a well-proven history of creating jobs.
And then there is this cost-saving mythology that needs to die a hard and permanent death. We are now living in an era of more super-destructive “natural” disasters, virtually all related to climate change, than the United States has ever experienced… by a wide margin. The number of billion-dollar+ disasters, replete with death and destruction on an unparalleled level, is vastly more costly in hard dollars than any possible savings to government budgetary allocations.
“The deadly fires in Hawaii and Hurricane Idalia’s watery storm surge helped push the U.S. to a record for the number of weather disasters that cost $1 billion or more — with four months still to go on what’s looking like a calendar of calamities.
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday [9/13] that from January through August, there have been 23 extreme weather events in the U.S. that cost at least $1 billion, eclipsing the entire-year record of 22 set in 2020. So far, this year’s disasters have cost more than $57.6 billion and claimed at least 253 lives.
“And NOAA’s count doesn’t yet include Tropical Storm Hilary’s damage in California and a deep drought that has struck the South and Midwest — those costs are still to be totaled, said Adam Smith, the NOAA expert who tracks billion-dollar disasters… ‘We’re seeing the fingerprints of climate change all over our nation,’ Smith said in an interview Monday [9/13]. ‘I would not expect things to slow down anytime soon.’
“NOAA has been tracking billion-dollar weather disasters in the U.S. since 1980 and adjusts damage costs for inflation. What’s happening reflects a rise in the number of disasters and more areas being built in risk-prone locations, Smith said…. ‘Exposure plus vulnerability plus climate change is supercharging more of these into billion-dollar disasters,’ Smith said.
“NOAA added eight new billion-dollar disasters to the list since its last update a month ago. In addition to Idalia and the Hawaiian fires that killed at least 115 people, the agency newly listed an Aug. 11 Minnesota hailstorm; severe storms in the Northeast in early August; severe storms in Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin in late July; mid-July hail and severe storms in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee and Georgia; deadly flooding in the Northeast and Pennsylvania in the second week of July ; and a late June outbreak of severe storms in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.” Associated Press, September 14th.
This “event” analysis doesn’t even cover the sheet misery of so many days across the United States of sustained record-breaking heat. It does not measure the extra draw of electrical power that those who have air conditioning place on our nation’s electrical grid. It fails to take into account those school days lost when schools without air conditioning were forced to close. But note, it is probably going to get a whole worse from now on.
“Experts say the U.S. has to do more to adapt to increased disasters because they will only get worse… ‘The climate has already changed, and neither the built environment nor the response systems are keeping up with the change,’ said former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Craig Fugate, who wasn’t part of the NOAA report… The increase in weather disasters is consistent with what climate scientists have long been saying, along with a possible boost from the current El Niño pattern, University of Arizona climate scientist Katharine Jacobs said.” AP.
Wildfires and tropical storms will continue to increase in both frequency and intensity. Intolerable heat will put more strain on our electrical grid… for those who can afford air conditioning. Plant and animal life will either migrate (along with the diseases they carry) or die in untold numbers. Millions of people will die. And exactly what will life be like for the fattest of the fat cats who fought a meaningful containment of climate change?
I’m Peter Dekom, and when will the quality of our lives become more important than corporate profits?
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