October 30, 2012

Sandy and the USA: will the mega-storm finally open the discussion?

After record heat, drought and forest fires, crop loss and Arctic ice melt, now a mega-storm comes 'home' to the biggest climate pollutor world-wide. Will this example of 'exteme weather' finally put climate change on the US's two-party national agenda? And/or make the public, in North America and world-wide, demand change?

We don't know, but fortunately some voices out there are telling it like it is. We thank them for their messages and hope they get through -- starting with us.

See video interview link and transcript of: Bill McKibben on Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change: "If There Was Ever a Wake-up Call, This Is It" in discussion with Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! on October 29, as the storm was about to hit. See the following day's broadcast for a follow-up to the storm hitting New York City and the Eastern US coastline: here

From prolific blogger Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez, two relevant postings:

October 28, 2012: Waiting for Sandy

and from October 30: Will Frankenstorms Become the New Normal?
"Yesterday’s images of the NY Stock Exchange with sandbags at the front doors, or cars floating by on Wall Street, were not taken from the latest science fiction disaster movie, not this time.

This time they were real.  And next time the storm could be worse.

But despite all the dramatic headlines declaring Hurricane Sandy the worst storm to hit the East Coast in human memory, there has been barely a whisper of climate change in any of the top weather-related news stories.

I was hoping that Sandy would prove to be a big wake-up call for the privileged denizens of the East Coast, many of whom hold influential positions in business, finance and government.

But instead of people acknowledging the climate elephant in the room and starting to talk about proactive steps we can take to avoid such scenarios in the future, they are just following the usual reactionary script: marshalling disaster relief, urging the citizenry to donate to the American Red Cross, assessing the cost of the clean-up and how long it will take to put Humpty back together again." ...

And for an eloquent look and analysis of what brought us to this place, we thank Rebecca Solnit:

(On "the ultra-rich shaping the future of our planet.")...

"Where this matters most is climate change. Why have we done almost nothing over the past 25 years about what was then a terrifying threat and is now a present catastrophe? Because it was bad for quarterly returns and fossil-fuel portfolios. When posterity indicts our era, this will be the feeble answer for why we did so little -- that the rich and powerful with ties to the carbon-emitting industries have done everything in their power to prevent action on, or even recognition of, the problem. In this country in particular, they spent a fortune sowing doubt about the science of climate change and punishing politicians who brought the subject up. In this way have we gone through four “debates” and nearly a full election cycle with climate change unmentioned and unmentionable.

These three decades of refusing to respond have wasted crucial time. It’s as though you were prevented from putting out a fire until it was raging: now the tundra is thawing and Greenland’s ice shield is melting and nearly every natural system is disrupted, from the acidifying oceans to the erratic seasons to droughts, floods, heat waves, and wildfires, and the failure of crops. We can still respond, but the climate is changed; the damage we all spoke of, only a few years ago, as being in the future is here, now. ...

We need to talk about climate change as a war against nature, against the poor (especially the poor of Africa), and against the rest of us. There are casualties, there are deaths, and there is destruction, and it’s all mounting. Rectify the name, call it war. While we’re at it, take back the term “pro-life” to talk about those who are trying to save the lives of all the creatures suffering from the collapse of the complex systems on which plant and animal as well as human lives depend. The other side: “pro-death.” ... read full article here, print version