LITTLE ROCK — Superstorm Sandy capped a year of bad weather in the United States. Droughts in the Midwest that dried up fields from Iowa to Texas. Heat waves along the Atlantic Seaboard and points inland last summer. An oddball winter that left typically snowy states in the Upper Midwest practically snowless while other areas were repeatedly blanketed with the white stuff.
These unseasonal and dramatic events have wrought all kinds of havoc, but they have also had one positive effect: growing awareness that we are all beginning to feel the effects of a warming climate. Nothing made that more clear than Sandy, which slammed into New York and New Jersey on October 29. Power is still out in some places, the Eastern Seaboard in the two worst-hit states is littered with mile after mile of wrecked homes and businesses, whole coastal neighborhoods have become uninhabitable. With an estimated damage price tag of $90 billion, Sandy is shaping up to be the second-most costly hurricane after Katrina.
While global warming appeared to be a tacitly verboten subject during the just-concluded U.S. presidential campaign, President Barack Obama raised the issue, finally, during his victory speech, calling for a “national conversation” on climate change.
Really, the time to talk is long gone. Just ask the people in New York and New Jersey. They are still picking among their ruined homes. Or the farmers in Nebraska who saw their crops wither last summer under an unforgiving sun. Or Floridians, many of whom are struggling to pay ever-rising windstorm-insurance rates to cover even the most modest of homes.
Most observers believe that the United Nations officials now meeting in Qatar will not reach the consensus necessary to take admittedly tough steps to slow the rising global temperatures that are melting Arctic Sea ice and permafrost, shifting rainfall patterns that cause droughts and rising sea levels that contribute to stronger hurricanes.
The truth is we all need to be more engaged in the stark realities of climate change, which will affect the national economy over time just as much as will the huge federal budget debt.
No individual, no region, is immune from its effects, be it searing heat or severe flooding. Wise are those who look at the aftermath of Sandy and know that next year it could be our turn again.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 11/29/2012