Superstorn Cassandra

Will we listen this time?

 

Mark Hertsgaard at The Nation:

 

Never has a hurricane been more aptly, if tragically, named than Sandy, the superstorm that flooded New York City and battered much of the East Coast. At press time, the storm had killed at least forty-three people and caused an estimated $32 billion in damages to buildings and infrastructure—figures expected to increase in the coming days as emergency personnel pick through the wreckage—and left 8 million homes without electricity.

Sandy is short for Cassandra, the Greek mythological figure who epitomizes tragedy. The gods gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy; depending on which version of the story one prefers, she could either see or smell the future. But with this gift also came a curse: Cassandra’s warnings about future disasters were fated to be ignored. That is the essence of this tragedy: to know that a given course of action will lead to disaster but to pursue it nevertheless.

And so it has been with America’s response to climate change. For more than twenty years, scientists and others have been warning that global warming, if left unaddressed, would bring a catastrophic increase in extreme weather—summers like that of 2012, when the United States endured the hottest July on record and the worst drought in fifty years, mega-storms like the one now punishing the East Coast.

SNIP

But scientists’ warnings have been by and large ignored—at least within the corridors of power in Washington. As in the myth of Cassandra, today it remains unclear whether even the latest catastrophe—the devastation of America’s greatest city, its center of commerce, finance and, tellingly, the news media—will cause the nation to wake up and take serious action.

SNIP
Obama himself, however, has not linked Sandy with climate change, thereby continuing the climate silence that has characterized both his and Governor Romney’s presidential campaigns. Climate change went completely unmentioned in all three of the Romney-Obama debates, as well as in the debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan. This was historic: it marked the first time since 1984 that climate change was not discussed in any of the campaign debates. And when Obama was finally questioned about the omission last week in an interview with MTV, what was his response? Obama said he was “surprised” that climate change hadn’t come up in the debates—as if he himself had nothing to do with that result. After all, he’s only the president of the United States. Yet somehow Obama found plenty of time in the debates to brag about the record amount of oil drilling and pipeline laying his administration has presided over.

SNIP

Tell that to the insurance industry, which now faces at least $20 billion in damage claims following Hurricane Sandy. Tell it to America’s taxpayers, who are on the hook for an estimated $10–12 billion in additional uninsured damages—a figure that happens to equal the amount taxpayers already provide in subsidies to the oil, gas and coal industries that are most responsible not only for causing global warming but also for blocking government action against it. “How about instead of using our money to fuel climate change, we start using it to help people and stop future disasters?” asks Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International.

Above all, tell it to Valerie Baulmer, the heartbroken mother of 11-year-old Jack, who was killed with his best friend, 13-year-old Michael Robson, when the ferocious winds of Hurricane Sandy blew down a tree that smashed the Baulmer’s house in New Salem, New York. “I lost my son,” Ms. Baulmer wailed as she fell into the arms of the boy’s uncle. “I lost my son.”

SNIP

But ours need not be a Greek tragedy. Especially in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, there is no reason to continue disregarding scientists’ warnings about where our current path leads. Nor is there reason to doubt that a better path is possible. The solutions we need—a dramatic increase in energy efficiency; a rapid shift to solar, wind and other clean energy sources; a reversal of our current government subsidy patterns to champion climate-friendly rather than climate-destructive policies; and much else—are already available. Moreover, they promise to advance economic prosperity and summon the best of the American people and spirit.

SNIP
The question Hurricane Sandy really raises, then, is how long Big Oil will be allowed to hold the government of the United States hostage. How long will Exxon-Mobil’s business plans take precedence over the wellbeing and indeed survival of our children? Neither of the two presidential candidates provides great inspiration on this point, though Obama is at least willing to talk about the problem, as when he advocates eliminating some taxpayer subsidies to oil companies. (Romney, for his part, thinks Big Oil has not been favored enough by Washington.)

But no president can cross Big Oil in the way that is required to defuse the climate crisis without the help of a powerful and sustained popular movement. If Hurricane Sandy contributes to building such a movement—and McKibben and his fellow activists at 350.org and allied organizations are launching a national tour shortly after Election Day that aims to do just that—America might still avoid the curse of Cassandra by heeding her warnings at last.