Good on President Biden for Using His Visit to the Flood Zones to Give a Tutorial on Climate Change
by John Lawrence
Previously, after a natural disaster no one mentioned climate change. There was much bemoaning and commiserating, but Biden took a different tack. He lectured the American people about climate change and how it contributed to the disasters that had befallen the unfortunate. What's more he said they would continue and get worse unless we undertake to do something about it. No more attributing the disasters to one in 500 year events. That language is totally out the window. No more statements like "I've never seen anything like this my entire life." Get used to it. People are going to see a lot more of these climate disasters from now on. As President Biden said, we can't prevent these disasters from happening on a regular basis, but we can do something about them getting a lot worse. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is running ads on TV about how wonderful the oil and gas industry is, and they are lobbying their evil little hearts out to get politicians on their side.
“The nation and the world are in peril,” President Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and Jersey. “And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”
"Folks — and we have to take some bold action now to tackle the accelerating effects of climate. If we don’t act — now I’m going to be heading, as Chuck knows, as the senator knows, I’m going to be heading from here to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP meeting [United Nations Climate Change Conference], which is all the nations of the world getting together to decide what we are going to do about climate change. And John Kerry, the former secretary of state, is leading our effort, putting it together.
"We are determined, we are determined that we are going to deal with climate change and have zero emissions, net emissions by 2050. By 2020 [sic] (he meant 2030), make sure all our electricity is zero emissions. We’re going to be able to do these things. But we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move. And we’ve got to move the rest of the world. It’s not just the United States of America.
"And so, folks, this summer alone, communities with over 100 million Americans — 100 million Americans call home — have been struck by extreme weather. One in every three Americans has been victimized by severe weather. The hurricanes along the Gulf, the East Coast, up through this community. And I saw the human and physical cost firsthand, as I said, in Louisiana.
"And, folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here, it’s not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse? We can stop it from getting worse.
"And when I talk about building back better — and Chuck is fighting for my program, for our program on the Hill — when I talk about building back better, I mean you can’t build to what it was before this last storm. You got to build better so that if the storm occurred again, there would be no damage. There would be.
"But that’s not going to stop us, though, because if we just do that, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse. Because the storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so, folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red.
"The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. They’ve been warning us the extreme weather would get more extreme over the decade, and we’re living in it real time now."
Biden is telling it like it is. The American people are in for a lot more of these climate disasters, and we can't stop them immediately. It's going to take decades to get this problem under control, and that's only if we go full steam ahead by taking measures to get it under control. Meanwhile, there are measures which can be taken to mitigate the costs both human and financial from these climate disasters. People must move out of flood plains and areas prone to forest fires. We must underground utilities so that the power doesn't go out during hurricanes and wildfires. That goes for cell phones and cable TV too. People have to have secure means of communication even during a climate disaster. Building codes need to be upgraded. Water management needs to improve so that torrential rains do not just become runoff that turns into floods. That water is precious and needs to be transported to parts of the country that are in more or less perpetual drought. The power grid needs to be hardened. Transportation needs to be electrified. Power generation needs to use renewable sources, and advanced nuclear needs to be developed. Ways of making steel and concrete need to be developed that don't use fossil fuels and the methods of doing so need to be scaled up and spread throughout the whole world. Agriculture needs to be made organic and factory farms eliminated. It's not enough for the US and the developed world to do the right things. Green infrastructure must be developed and spread to the whole world. We must partner with China in a Green Belt and Road Initiative. They are very advanced in building infrastructure throughout the world. While the US has been fighting needless wars, China has been building infrastructure albeit not green infrastructure. From now on coal fired power plants in India and China need to be eliminated and replaced with renewable energy and advanced nuclear power generation.
