Climate Change Retrograde – A Noble Experiment against Intensive Flooding

Climate Change Retrograde – A Noble Experiment against Intensive Flooding

As Time Marshes On: Trusting Nature or Environmental Vandalism?

The realities of climate change disasters are literally reshaping Earth’s geography. Depicted individually in the press, the scope of intensity and frequency of such climate change decimation is beginning to overwhelm environmentalists, physicists, urban planners and those national leaders not mired in “make a really bad problem so much worse” conspiracy theories. It does seem that leadership often requires “going against the grain of popular sentiment.” In the United States, that MAGA followers even in the most severely climate change impacted states, continue to marginalize climate change driven disasters as “mere cycles” … an unsustainable belief that is already coming to haunt these bastions of scientific and medical denialism. MAGA leaders are mostly sheep, unwilling to lead.

While national MAGA (aka, the Republican Party) fight federal legislation aimed at saving the nation from the accelerating damage from such disasters, it is red state governors who add, so to speak, fuel to the seriously damaging, wrong-headed denialism. While red states seem to bear the brunt of climate change disasters in heavily populated areas, MAGA voters do not want to hear about that. They know “something” climate-related is happening – they can see it either in the resulting mass destruction or at least the exploding cost (where still available) of homeowners insurance – but they have other priorities, mostly responding to fabricated issues embellished by conspiracy theories, where lower taxes for the “job creators” (false), extracting government from regulatory expertise, Christian dogma mandates a “culture war,” and deporting immigrants loom larger. Dis- and mis-information define their world. But most Americans, especially younger voters, have long since noted that the climate change amber alert is turning red fast.

“This hurricane season has… amplified another disturbing trend: misinformation about catastrophic weather extremes… For example, social media users have falsely claimed that Hurricanes Helene and Milton were created or steered by human technology. Such lies generate mistrust and anger, which are too often directed at meteorologists who work to save lives by providing accurate scientific forecasts warning those in harm’s way to evacuate.

“Technology capable of creating or steering hurricanes does not exist outside of science fiction, or perhaps the lairs of cartoon villains. Humans shape extreme weather in another way: When we burn fossil fuels such as oil and gas, we release heat-trapping greenhouse gases that act as a blanket abnormally warming our planet. Scientists know that this human-caused warming is the real reason hurricanes such as Helene and Milton have become more dangerous.” Andra Garner, associate professor and climate scientist in the department of environmental science at Rowan University in New Jersey, October 23rd, Associated Press.

Leading red state governors, notably Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Texas’ Greg Abbott, continue to focus on individual disasters and federal relief programs, and cling stubbornly to the “God will save us; he promised never again to impose a global disaster on us after the Great Flood” evangelical mantra or a notion that we will recycle to effectively, that old “Great America” of times long past… ineffective bandages for a major life-threatening wound. As death tolls mount, we should be acutely aware that Mother Nature’s messages are global, which brings me to a killer torrential rain in Spain and a bizarre fallback to a nature experiment in southwestern England.

Joseph Wilson and Teresa Medrano, writing for the October 31st Associated Press, describe the damage from the worst rains in memory across Spain (a reality in other parts of Europe) at the end of October: “Flash floods in Spain turned village streets into rivers, ruined homes, disrupted transportation and killed at least 95 people in the worst natural disaster to hit the European nation in recent memory.

“Rainstorms that started Tuesday [10/29] and continued Wednesday [10/30] caused flooding across southern and eastern Spain, stretching from Malaga to Valencia. Muddy torrents tumbled vehicles down streets at high speeds while debris and household items swirled in the water. Police and rescue services used helicopters to lift people from their homes and rubber boats to reach drivers stranded atop cars… Emergency services in the eastern region of Valencia confirmed a death toll of 92 people on Wednesday. Two additional casualties were reported in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha region, while southern Andalusia reported one death.” Washed away villages an infrastructure, added to impassable streets in major cities have rewritten Spain’s topography.

But in rain prone England, there are areas of vastly increased intensity of rain driven flooding. It got so bad, with massive flooding literally making farming and living almost impossible in the Steart Marshes in coastal Somerset, England, the best efforts to stop this overly repetitious cycle of destruction – sea walls, tidal barriers and sandbanks – were no longer viable or affordable solutions. As Rory Smith, writing for the October 22nd New York Times tells it: “[On a traditional salt marsh on] a tendril of land curling out from the coast of Somerset, in southwestern England, a team of scientists, engineers and conservationists have embraced a radical solution…

“In a project costing 20 million pounds (around $26 million), tidal waters were allowed to flood the Steart Peninsula in 2014 for the first time in centuries…Rather than attempting to resist the sea, the land was given back to it. It was, in the words of Alys Laver, the conservationist who oversees the site, a ‘giant science experiment’…A decade on, its results might offer a blueprint for how some parts of Britain — and the rest of the world — might adapt to the reality of climate change… And so, as the sun rose on Sept. 8, 2014, the tide was allowed to flood the peninsula. Water flowed through a new gap, about 220 yards wide, and then into channels and rivulets that, from above, looked like the veins of a leaf. The land had been surrendered. The experiment had begun.” Before the floodgates were opened, the land was prepared to handle to flow with specific channels and berms carved into the area to reflect what a viable salt marsh would need.

A decade later, the newly flooded area resisted the most intensive rainfall: “The marsh acts as a natural and hugely effective bulwark against flooding, absorbing and slowing tides before they can encroach inland. Even last winter — the wettest anyone in the area could remember — the village at one edge of the peninsula did not flood. Paths through the marsh remained passable. A steep bank, covered with grass and significantly higher than the old flood wall, now borders the river… The area is also a haven for wildlife. Bird-watching blinds with giant windows offer glimpses of godwits, plovers, oystercatchers, egrets and herons. A growing population of avocets — black-and-white wading birds with distinctive, curling beaks — has gathered around the pools of brackish water.” AP. Carbon absorption, from both the new grasses and the soil itself, skyrocketed. Free roaming cattle feasted on new, rich plant life. Simply, this small experiment worked.

While this is a difficult solution in many regions – government buyouts of largescale real estate clearly complicate implementing such solutions on a global scale – climate change problems require multiple and massive solutions if we are truly going to adapt the Earth to this existential threat to us all. This is one solution that must be included in our climate change resistance.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am both tired from and angry at this stubborn resistance to necessary and “we can do it” solutions from major global climate change deniers and marginalizers, particularly in a nation that was built around finding solutions… the United States of America.

Guns-and-Butter Redux

 WWII, when war demanded sacrifice

One of the hallmarks of a modern economic democracy is that you can have guns (expensive wars and social programs) OR butter (low taxes) but not both at the same time. If you lower taxes while keeping government spending high, there is what I will call a conflict of expectations. Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt enacted the New Deal to pull the United States out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the government has been pumping money into the sophisticated infrastructure our nation needs (he built roads, dams with power generating power, levees and conservation enhancements to our national parks) and Roosevelt-era programs like Social Security and Medicare (paid, today unfortunately only in part, for by employers and their employees, deposited with a government agency). Those social benefits have been revamped and expanded but continue today with pledges of support by both parties.

As evidenced by the Vietnam War and all the significant wars and conflicts we have fought since, Americans do not like paying for such obvious major expensive choices with the necessary tax hike needed to pay for these “extraordinary” and expensive military forays… and they are addicted to the benefits that began in the Roosevelt administration, a contribution clearly associated with the Democratic Party. Republican orthodoxy, however, has mislabeled these social programs as “creeping socialism” and virtually every post WWII Republican (with the notable exception of Dwight “beware of the military-industrial complex” Eisenhower, who began the construction of our interstate highway system) has vowed to repeal those social programs to keep taxes low. Today, we are so used to so many government expenditures inside our economy that taking those out of the mix could actually trigger a depression.

Even as arch-conservative Ronald Reagan pledged to repeal these social “entitlements” to keep taxes low, he actually did neither. Nixon even expanded those “entitlements,” and while the Bush presidencies fought military conflicts in the Middle East (expanded to Central Asia), they kept taxes in check. Effectively, Americans want those Democratic-embraced benefits and Republican-adored tax cuts… and what should have been conservative zeal to melt aways those benefits to keep taxes low under the mythological falsehood – trickle down economics which incent the job creators… except that never happens – find perilous political support among most Americans.

So, the benefits continue even as Republicans threaten to eliminate those much-loved social programs to fund those tax reductions they cherish. The upshot is that the only way to pay for those expensive wars and those social programs Americans will not live without raising taxes is… er… to borrow. Which creates a massive “gotta pay it” annual interest carry on our deficit. Or we could create hidden taxes like high tariffs for products Americans truly use; the government gets the cash, and the consumers face higher prices, effectively a consumer sales tax. And de facto taxes on goods impacts those Americans in the lower half of the economic ladder, those with the least discretionary income, far more than those in the upper half. Hence such taxes bear the label “regressive” vs a graded increase in income taxes as earnings rise (a “progressive” tax schema).

There are hidden problems that attach to government spending habits that begin to have a life of their own and the momentum of expectations that becomes immutable. For example, Social Security was created in the 1930s, a time when rising younger workers vastly outnumbered the elderly retirees drawing Social Security. Slowly over the years, beginning to reverse in the 1980s, that cadre of young workers was soon supporting an increasingly larger, retired ex-workforce. Simply, the funding model that has supported Social Security at inception no longer worked. Back to “borrow, don’t tax”… and the deficit climbs.

The “sacrosanct” military ignored Eisenhower’s admonition and asked for more, and more, and more. Indeed, that evil “military industrial complex” quickly learned to spread its manufacturing facilities far and wide, embracing as many Congressional districts as possible. Sorry is the legislator from either party who pares military orders from his or her district… leading to the “I won’t challenge your support for your district if you don’t mess with mine” willingness to claim we need that strong military to protect our nation. That military appropriation is massive and almost never budges… even as modern wars end.

Noting that the second largest modern air force in the world is the US Navy, second only to the US Air Force itself, we love to build massive aircraft carriers (at $15 billion each) with aircraft than can cost north of $50 million each. Yet the world is rapidly replacing their manned military aircraft with drones. Harsh reality for one of the finest and best trained militaries on earth: the United States has repeatedly been brought to its knees by asynchronous enemies (hit-and-run irregulars), as in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Is that the deep state Donald Trump rails about? Or does he want his own private deep state? Even though it seems embedded in our political system, where the tax code is often amended to cater to special interests and where military suppliers love to hire retired US military officers, we are facing a new form of favoritism – that cronyism Americans claim they hate – where those steering our major economic decisions (the DOGE “advisors” – Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy) are absolutely generating massive wealth increases from their political involvement. Musk already got Trump to reverse his opposition to EV vehicles (or was that just for Teslas?), amped his support of Trump and watched his holdings skyrocket in value. Tesla shares alone jumped 40%.

I’m Peter Dekom, does America live on Dunkin’ or is that conflicts-of-interest… and exactly how can billionaire DOGE plans to restore “fiscal sanity” really work without triggering economic horribles like practical cronyism, rising inflation or a trickle-down recession?