tornado alert

And floods and droughts and …

The numbers are startling and increasingly touching us in one way or another. Climate change is spawning a transformation in our lifestyle we have yet to entirely recognise, much less grasp.

This year alone—hours short of five months’ time—1016 tornadoes were reported in the United States. Based on my limited math skills, on the 123rd day of calendar year 2024, that means more than 8 tornadoes daily in the United States. While I learned in climatology class during college (one of the most fascinating subjects I studied) that the overwhelming majority of the planet has no tornadoes, that factoid is evolving with climate change; now we are only the preponderant place as one earlier this year in Australia indicated. It’s the typography of the country that makes this true.

But we certainly never had more than eight a day in the past. According to NBC News this morning, this is already the second most prolific tornado year on record. Consider also that while the number of days of the calendar spread out the tornadoes, they are concentrated geographically in the country east of the Rockies.

This past twenty-four hours had a massive storm, with tornadoes in tow, walloped the DFW metroplex, leading to power outages for well over a million folks in and around Big D already ensconced in summer heat (which is dreadful earlier than in the old days). A couple of weeks ago, Houston similarly felt an assault by a tornado, leaving the same widespread destruction and attendant power outages. Texas has already had problems with power over the last several years (remember the uncommon cold snap during the pandemic when the power grid failed and politicians trying fleeing with their families to Mexico for warmth?) and yet the problem does not appear front and center in the state as increasingly volatile conditions create repeated hardships for the poor, elderly, and even the average Texan who can’t just jet away for convenience’s sake.

The tornadoes over this past week also dropped their nasty effects on southwestern Missouri, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Tennessee, among other areas. The repeated visits by absolute downpours over this past six weeks across the south central portion of the United States led to ground saturation that is hard to fathom while increasing challenges for essential personal repairing property and community buildings. In short, the greater and more enduring extreme conditions make living conditions far more dangerous, unpredictable, and expensive than only a few years back.

Climate change in the United States doesn’t merely mean this proliferation of nasty vortices on land: the National Hurricane Center predicts 4-7 major Atlantic hurricanes this year, according to reports last week. When we bought our place in Annapolis, because it overlooks water, we had to get flood insurance, even though we are not on the ground level but perhaps thirty feet above the Creek. When we found out about the insurance, my husband joked with the agent that if water reaches us, then some dude with an ark will be coming by to save us. I am not making fun of hurricanes as they are increasingly deadly—and expensive. The risk of fatalities for the numerous coastal communities from Brownsville along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts to Nova Scotia are tremendous, particularly as retirees fled to Florida in hopes of lower taxes and stricter government regulations created crowded beach communities and a highly populated state. Coupled with rising sea levels on any given day, some coastal communities face existential questions. A photograph of houses falling into the Atlantic at Rodanthe, North Carolina exemplifies this. It’s easy to ignore vacation homes disappearing but those structures may be long-term family investments as much as refuges for occasional renters.

But it is the cost of assistance to these folks, whether in the form of insurance payments or—more commonly—federal disaster aid that affects each and every one of us. How many presidents, beginning with Biden responding to Florida but dating back through the twentieth century, have offered emergency aid to communities devastated by hurricane flooding? It is ironic how often it occurs in parts of the country which continue to advocate for a smaller government but seem willing to forgo that policy prescription when the disaster hits at home. The Federal Emergency Management Agency website currently lists seven disaster declarations it is addressing in the United States.

Those able to buy home owners’ insurance in Florida pay a median amount of $10,996 annually but many companies are abandoning the state due to litigation standards and the increasing frequency of payouts due to storm damage. Similarly in California, homeowners’ insurance due to fires and flooding mean options to buy are shrinking. It’s hardly restricted to the coasts as homeowners across the nation are finding problems with access to this expensive but purchase.

The mountain west has had a relatively wet year but how long will that address the growing drought conditions of the past half century? Will we have horrible fires across California, the Pacific Northwest, and even the interior Rockies next year once the rainfall is a distant memory? Perhaps but the utter complexity of the variables make it hard to predict and thus to prepare in any sustained manner.

Climate change, of course, also guarantees less predictable winters and summers across the country. The aging power grid, while welcoming limited solar augmentation where applicable and affordable, struggles to meet needs but will be expensive to replace when the time comes. The utility companies prefer delaying that major recapitalisation of the system yet at some point this will become unavoidable as population demands grow and older technologies fall to new, hopefully more efficient systems.

Humans across the globe are proving pretty unwilling to forego the modern conveniences in our carbon-centric world. Could this have played a part in the landslide in Padua New Huinea over the weekend which overran 2,000 people trying to flee it? China remains the largest user of coal but refuses to focus on commitments to meet climate goals because of a superceding aspiration to be energy-independent. Since China has massive coal depositions, why shift away from the dirty coal-driven power plants? Authoritarian governments may have the luxury of making such decisions but democratic India now has worse skies than Beijing or Xi’an. Yet Prime Minister’s Modi’s focuses more on solidifying Hindu nationalism than addressing fundamental reforms to prevent ever-proliferating air pollution which further exacerbates global climate change. And the list goes on.

The temperatures in India and China, along with countless other locations, are bound to be extreme this summer, with little relief in sight. Remember reports of the past two years in Southwestern China (2022), Beijing (2023), and India and Pakistan before monsoons arrive annually? Conditions without air conditioning are stifling and the power grid in those locations strain as does our own yet there are fewer alternate options to find relief in the cities of East and South Asia as climate change deepens.

Then there are droughts which lead to changes in insect patterns while altering food security. Yet another huge subtopic we hope will disappear but is far from likely to do so.

The guarantee I can provide for answers to any and all of these issues is that we are making it more expensive every day we ignore climate change. Actions do indeed create consequences. That is not to blame any single industry, any single country, or any individuals; that would be ridiculous and simplistic. Humans bear the brunt of the causes so we too will have to find the solutions.

Ignoring the problem has done us no good over half a century, however. What matters now is that it’s affecting so many people, often repeatedly, as it they were punching bags. Do governments view this threat under their purview to defend their citizens?

Defending them requires more than handing out recovery cheques, if available, that grow ever bigger, allowing us to invoke the quote so often attributed to Albert Einstein about doing the same thing repeatedly, then expecting a different outcome being insanity.

Most nations do not have the relief system we have nor is the global NGO community set up to address the climate change dangers. What are the alternatives to the droughts? The Fires? the Floods hitting Africa’s population regularly, each highlighted earlier this month.

I don’t know whether Einstein said that quotation but I do know that there is no fairy dust to sprinkle out there to make this all get better overnight. I know that addressing climate change is going to mean a sustained, long-term shift in global thinking and actions because the problem results from intertwined worldwide activities. We can’t keep admiring the problem, hoping someone else will fix it. We personally as individuals and Americans can lead the way but we are divided on this like everything else. Another place where actions create consequences.

It’s easy to blame the Chicoms or Delhi or Vlad the Impaler for producing carbon exports or the poor of Niger for burning charcoal if they can find any trees to make charcoal. But blame without action is still admiring the problem.

When temperatures increase another 1.5 degrees to make San Antonio, Baton Rouge, Bisbee, and Whitby island regularly intolerable locations to live, won’t we ask why no one did anything with all of our brilliance as humans to address this? Didn’t we realise the cascading effect of these individual challenges? Is this really the gift we seek to leave our children, regardless what party or creed we embrace?

I welcome your thoughts. If you have the solution, get it out there. I still drive a gasoline-powered auto so I don’t claim to be ‘holier than thou’, though I repeatedly take the steps I can to mitigate. Those immeasurably minute steps are that but they are what I know best and can actually do. How about you? Please do weigh in as we need solutions and quickly.

Thank you for reading Actions create consequences today and any day. Please feel free to circulate this if you find it of value. Thank those who put their financial support into this column as it motivates me further each day to write.

It was another calm but beautiful sunrise in Eastport.

Be well and be safe, including from storms. FIN

Brady Dennis, ‘Sixth home in Outer Banks town falls into the sea’, Washingtonpost.com, 29 May 2024, p. A16.

Federal Emergency Management Agency, ‘Disasters and other Declarations’, retrieved at https://www.fema.gov/disaster/declarations

Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanaskul, ‘The Home Insurance Crunch: See What’s Happening in Your State’, NewYorkTimes.com, 13 May 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/13/climate/home-insurance-profit-us-states-weather.html

Insurify staff, ‘Different States, Same Problem: A Home Insurance Crisis’, insurify.com, 9 May 2024, retrieved at https://insurify.com/homeowners-insurance/news/home-insurance-crisis/

‘NOAA Predicts Above-Normal Atlantic 2024 Hurricane Season’, NOAA.gov, 23 May 2024, retrieved at https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-predicts-above-normal-2024-atlantic-hurricane-season