People are wondering whether climate change caused Hurricane Harvey. That’s the wrong question. Hurricanes have been happening on Earth as long as there have been oceans. The question should be “How did climate change influence Harvey?”
Some pieces over the last few days from USA Today, Gizmodo, Michael Mann’s piece in The Guardian, and an interview with Dan Kammen on Democracy Now! all answer that question similarly. A hotter climate charges the conditions for more intense rain and higher winds. A hotter atmosphere can hold more water. Warmer waters drive the system harder. Once the water gets into the atmosphere, it has to go somewhere: down. And heat is energy. That added energy builds up one way or another. Think about that heat and water together like a band playing a show.
The Beatles had a lot of energy. Girls went nuts when they played “Love me do.” But what happens when you add even more energy to the show? It gets faster. It gets more distorted. First it might be like “Revolution” but eventually it becomes Black Sabbath. Keep it up and you get music that most people will turn off in a second. Next it’s Guns n’ Roses and before you know it you’re at a Slayer show. But you can’t leave this concert. It’s where we live.
We need to do something about that. The first step to tackling any problem is to define the problems for what it is. In this case, it’s clear that human-caused climate change is a contributor and that bad planning has made it worse.
Meteorologist Eric Holthaus is quoted in the USA Today piece. He says
Harvey is what climate change looks like. More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn’t want to take climate change seriously…Be wary of those that caution against ‘politicizing’ Harvey. Our choices — development, social supports, climate change — are what led to this. If we don’t talk about the social context of Harvey, we won’t be able to prevent future disasters. It’s our moral duty to talk climate now.
Climate change is a policy issue that’s become a partisan football. By all means, it has to be a policy issue. With science this clear and storms like Harvey have been predicted for some time, we need to adapt and prevent.
But the fossil fuel companies have sold doubt as their product to keep us from even recognizing the issue. Add to that the big developers and the make-a-fast-buck financiershave and we the people have been hamstrung from even naming the issue.
For years they’ve spread disinformation about human-caused climate change while they’ve made a killing. Exxon is known to have profited from hiding the science of climate change, science they understand very well. Their own scientists knew that burning fossil fuels amplified the greenhouse effect and caused a range of problems from melting ice and rising seas to hotter drier periods and more intense rainfall. Meanwhile, their CEOs and PR pals were burying and selling doubt as their product.
For whose advantage? Theirs.
At whose expense? Ask the poor and minority communities of the bathtub of the Gulf of Mexico, of New Orleans, of Houston, and the communities living near their two leaking refineries today.
And the big developers have just wanted to build, build, build as if covering bayous with pavement would only make us richer. It doesn’t and it hasn’t. For sure, Houston’s economy has boomed for decades as it’s gone from a mid-size city to America’s fourth largest metropolis. But all that growth has been too fast and with too little thought to what that environmental change means for people, never mind all the creatures we live with. What was once a big sponge is now a cookie sheet cut through with waterways.
There’s no doubt that Harvey would overwhelm even the smartest built city. But Houston’s sprawling concrete development has made a bad dream a nightmare. Luckily, many Texans and Americans are a robust and charitable people who have responded with kindness and resolve. But it is no thanks to bad planning and wealthy interests getting their ways on the backs of the many.
The American taxpayer will be subsidizing their profits when we bail out Houston. That, my friends, is a massive redistribution of wealth. The big boys are carrying out guerrilla class warfare.
If we don’t talk about climate change and bad urban planning we are being plainly illogical. Worse, if we don’t rethink how burning fossil fuels and building badly at breakneck pace, we will continue to make a bad problem worse. None of us, no matter how tough we are, want to live with those costs.
Peter Walks for Democracy 