Sandy was a climate red-alert

Ordinary people must demand action to halt global devastation.

by Ish Theilheimer

Expect huge reverberations from the carnage and misery caused by the biggest-ever Atlantic hurricane, Sandy.

On the positive side, one effect of the storm is that Barack Obama is likely to be re-elected as President of the USA —  presuming popular opinion will overcome voter suppression and other dirty tricks in states where Tea Party influence is strong. Obama’s prompt, effective and compassionate response to the emergency worked – where no talking points ever could — to underscore his campaign theme of an America that's all about inclusiveness and mutual aid.

Obama's response stood in obvious contrast to the George W Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — a memory the Republican Party tried to bury even as Hurricane Isaac bore down upon their Convention.  Only seven years after Katrina, the American public remembers all too well Bush's callous indifference, and the ineffectiveness of federal emergency response — due to the cuts Bush made to public services and the incompetent political hacks he'd put in charge of emergency response. Obama’s obvious concern, and the efficiency of the revamped FEMA, made his administration look caring and effective.

Also positive is the jobs impact of the recovery, so massive it's bound to put thousands of Americans back to work — as long as vengeance-seeking Tea Party crazies don't find ways to cut off financial support for rebuilding. (A party that almost forced the USA to default on debts in order to make the president look bad is unlikely to have qualms about increasing the homeless population.) Canada is likely to feel an economic bounce too, supplying wood and steel so the Eastern Seaboard can rebuild.

The misery and damages of the storm far overwhelm the positives, especially outside the USA. In hurricane-ready Cuba, for instance,  15,000 houses were totally destroyed and 43,426 lost their roofs, with 11 killed. In America, the toll will be enormouse, although authorities will need a while to assess all the damages and account for all the dead.  Horrific miseries inflicted have been inflicted on the country's sprawling eastern cities, particularly on poor people. Many lives will be ruined.

Most horrific, though, is the increasing frequency of killer storms, droughts and other weather catastrophes due to the global inaction on climate change. In the face of waves of evidence and scientific warnings (please read George Lakoff's article from last week about "systemic causation," and check out, on our News blog, the warnings scientists had been issuing for years ) about the prospect of giant storm surges drowning New York City.

Oil-patch politicians like Stephen Harper bear a lot of the blame for global inaction on climate change. His trained seals in Parliament prattle on farcically about the NDP's supposed "job-killing carbon tax," (which the NDP hasn't proposed) as if more carbon in the atmosphere is a non-issue.

Sandy also thrust climate change into the US election, as top Republicans and business leaders acknowledged that the issue is real.  Before Sandy, US politicans and media alike tried to ignore while the worst drought since the Dirty Thirties destroyed farms, and giant murderous storms like Katrina and Sandy flattened cities and showed their capacity to bring our entire society to its knees.

Sandy pulled the curtain back on the US’ taboo topic: that the wealthiest corporations and people on the planet oppose green energy and cutting back on oil use because they wouldn't make quite as much money with renewables.

Now the topic is on the table for public discussion. The real mystery is whether ordinary people, in the face of the current anti-government, right-wing onslaught, will summon the fortitude — and insight — to demand we stop destroying our world and our children's future, before it's too late.

© Copyright 2012 Ish Theilheimer, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca