It would seem almost like a bad Hollywood scripted movie. The earth is warming, all scientists with any credibility are shouting from the rooftops that the data is moving exponentially in the wrong direction, rulers of small island nations are begging for help at the UN, and the polar ice caps and glaciers where humans replenish their water supplies, are melting faster than ever before.
Yet the two contenders for the position of leader of the largest polluting nation on earth, as they run to the finish line for their election, have mentioned virtually nothing at all on climate change. Debates seen by millions of people, are devoid of one word on the subject.
Then, like the shark in “Jaws”, as the election day nears, a freak “superstorm” of a size never before encountered on the NE coast, slips up the back alley and crushes the most populous part of the country on the eve of election. Voting may be effected by the lack of electricity and infrastructure. Salt water intrusion into all major subway, electrical equipment, and floods of biblical proportions. The “storm of the century”, yet it isn’t. It’s the third major freak storm in 6 years here in the US. (not to mention the one that struck China). And yet, no one wants to raise the “CC” word in politics.
Bob Dylan famously sang, “It doesn’t take a weather man to know which way the wind blows.” The outcome of heating the planet is growing increasingly hard to ignore. Scientists that believe in it have, for decades now, warned that the outcome of global warming will be increasing freakish and powerful storms. This is not some future scenario at this point, but our world, now. Certainly, insurance companies, the most rational of all businesses, are not ignoring the increasing dangers of not solving this problem. People living on coasts affected by these storms are seeing their premiums rise to cover the risk.
It’s time to realize that changing the infrastructure, to allow rapid movement away from coal and gasoline engines for cars, is of national, if not international importance. Our ability to create, globally, a ‘moon shot’ program to get the planet off of coal first, along with gasoline engines for personal driving (moving to electric as fast as possible), is becoming not just important, but possibly critical.
We cannot risk more loss of major government and economic centers. We dodged a bullet on having five nuclear plants within 40 miles of major population centers wiped out by this storm, and a melt down could have endangered more than a few massive cities.
The time has come for our politicians to stop ignoring this problem, and deal with it. There will be plenty of opportunity for our free enterprise system to make lots of money fixing this. And that is something both parties cherish.
Filed under: Puget Sound | Tagged: Puget Sound |
