Hurricane Florence

‘Storm of a lifetime’ is how the National Weather Service in Wilmington, NC, described Hurricane Florence as it came lumbering across the Atlantic to hurl its ferocious winds and rain onto that coastal state. Pointing to the storm’s unusual path, one meteorologist said, “There’s virtually no precedent for a hurricane moving southwest for some time along the Carolina coast”. Florence is expected to slow down as it hits the coast, dumping a catastrophic amount of water over a small area instead of spreading rain far and wide. What that means for North Carolina’s numerous hog farms, coal ash pits and nuclear reactors is anyone’s guess, but there is a high likelihood of an environmental disaster unfolding.

We aren’t necessarily seeing more large storms. We’re seeing the usual storm activity jumping into overdrive, as The Washington Post’s Chris Mooney described how “[i]n little more than a day, Hurricane Florence exploded in strength, jumping from a Category 1 to a Category 4 behemoth with 140 mph winds.”

On the other side of the planet an even stronger storm, with wind speeds greater than Florence, Super Typhoon Mangkhut, is heading right toward the Philippines and China. Geographically, between Florence and Mangkhut lie the islands of Hawaii that got battered by Hurricane Olivia just weeks after being hit by Hurricane Lane. And only weeks ago, large swaths of the planet were struck by debilitating and record-breaking heat waves, fueling out-of-control wildfires up and down California’s coast. We have barely recovered from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and Hurricane Harvey in Houston last year, and before we know it, worse climate-related disasters will be upon us.

The earth is trying to tell us something: We are a species in deep, deep trouble. No matter how much our politicians dismiss the reality of global warming, minimize its impact or offer false solutions, the rapidly intensifying storms and their unpredictable paths are screaming out that our climate is changing. Heat waves are cooking the ground we walk on. No longer is a melting glacier in a far-off location the worst sign of our changing climate – the signs are happening here and now.

A warmer planet cares little for an invasive species called ‘Homo sapiens’ that has colonized its surface and poisoned it. We may as well think of global warming as a planetary fever intended to cast us off as one would a pesky and persistent virus. It’s just physics, after all – something that ought to be grasped by anyone who understands why the inside of their enclosed car gets scorching hot after even a few minutes of sitting in the sun.

At a time when we should be heeding the earth’s angry response to our greenhouse gas emissions, Donald Trump’s administration is steadily unraveling our modest protections from climate change. On Monday, news emerged that the Environmental Protection Agency would make it easier for energy companies to dump methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. According to The New York Times, the proposal would be the “third major step this year to roll back federal efforts to fight climate change.” Just when we should be rapidly and dramatically scaling back all fossil fuel extraction and consumption, we are literally going backward.

Even in California, which has led the charge against Trump’s ill-fated decision to ignore climate change, and where Gov Jerry Brown just signed an ambitious clean energy bill into law, we are not doing nearly enough. Gov Brown and the California state legislature have led the way on climate actions, but the federal bar is so low that California is able to preserve and even expand its oil and gas extraction industries and still claim to be leading the way on climate change.

This article has been excerpted from: ‘Our Planet Is Angry’.

Courtesy: Commondreams.org