Climate Reality-- Severe Exacerbation, not gentle increases
By Rob Kall
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Harvey flood
The same time that Harvey was producing billions in damage and inflicting suffering upon tens of thousands, and the deaths of fifty, climate change was also exacerbating bad weather, also causing massive damage in other parts of the world, including 1200+ deaths and impacting 40 million plus people in Asia.
The fools who deny climate change will happily pay billions to red-state Texas because of the flooding. Of course, the money will find its way to bankers and well-connected contractors, land developers and politicians.
The reality is that climate change is going to exacerbate weather and manifest as weather events that exceed all past records, like the historic thousand year flood Hurricane Harvey produced.
Scientists talk about how, over time, the oceans will rise centimeters or inches over time. And that will happen. But the harsher reality is that Climate Change has show its true face and it is violent, brutal and massive destruction. When costs of dealing with Climate Change are weighed, or factored into economic assessments, it's essential to add the billions of dollars in costs Hurricanes like Harvey, Sandy and Katrina are inflicting upon individuals and regions.
And it is insane to simply rebuild where these extreme weather events occur. The reality is that Houston is no longer viable as it existed. Nature has made a clear statement. I'm not saying that Houston should shut down. But Serious studies of the flooding must be done and before any funds for rebuilding are provided, a big picture plan must be implemented so that the same destruction is not allowed to happen again. That may include refusing to rebuild tens of thousands of homes that exist on ground that is no longer safe.
Further, every spot on the planet must be re-assessed in terms of the exposure and risk for damage caused by extreme, climate change exacerbated weather. Based on those assessments, new bullding and construction policies and restrictions must be put in place. And existing construction must also accept the responsibility for re-building so that properties-- homes, businesses, streets, roads and neighborhoods are re-made so they can survive extreme weather.
This will costs billions of dollars. But it will, surely, cost much less than doing the same AFTER floods like Harvey and Sandy. This is a bitter pill to swallow, but it must be done. Things are not going to get better, because the corporations that produce and aggravate climate change are pulling the strings in Washington.
| Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media. He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, more detailed bio: Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventingproducts, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project. (more...) |
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