Fires Floods & Sick People

 

Roscommon/Crawford Chapter

Fires, Floods, and Sick People

Many of the top news stories in the United States over the past several weeks have been about weather-related catastrophes that owe their intensity to climate change. The recent Hurricane Laura capped a record 13 named storms that struck the southern coast of the US. Texas and Louisiana coasts suffered as Laura brought 150 mile/hour winds, the highest ever recorded in Louisiana. The winds and the related storm surges caused home and building damage and loss of municipal services leaving more than ½ million customers without power in Texas and Louisiana. The total costs for clean-up are not yet clear but one observer gave a hint of the problem, “there aren’t enough roofers in Louisiana to fix all the roofs.”

As I write this, a new Hurricane to be known as Sally, is now forming in the over-warm waters of the gulf coast. Hang on.

While Laura’s winds were raging, the hurricane brought flooding from the resulting storm surge and a deluge of rain that added to the woes in many Louisiana parishes. To the  west, the opposite occurred as California, Oregon, and Washington continued to experience drought and excessive heat. The heat, wind, and tinder dry conditions created perfect conditions for fires that continue to this day. One little known consequence of the fires covering the broad areas affected has been the smoke-filled skies over much of the state. Smoke continues to flow east and reports indicate that Michigan is now being affected by smoke from California. Today, the American west has the poorest air quality anywhere in the world.

While these things were happening in the west, Iowa experienced a derecho –“ a line of intense, widespread and fast-moving windstorms and thunderstorms that move across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds.” This, while the rest of the state is suffering a drought and a Covid 19 outbreak. The consequences of these problems are homelessness, suffering, and related illnesses. 

The southwest states of Arizona, New Mexico, and California are experiencing their own brand of misery with unrelenting heat. Heat records have been shattered in Arizona with the temperature reaching 110 F or more for 50 days. Meanwhile, in Death Valley National Park, on August 16, 2020 ambient temperatures reached a new record. Journalist Katie O’Reilly, Sierra magazine’s adventure and lifestyle editor happened to be visiting the park with her boyfriend. Here is how she described her experience.

“We were standing in the lowest point of majestically desolate Death Valley National Park—Badwater Basin, where the floors are salt flats and the walls are two-mile-high mountains. Nestled high above us in the rock face, a sign read “Sea Level” in block-white Hollywood-sign lettering. But Kevin, my boyfriend, was looking into his phone, crestfallen at missing the show back home: ‘There’s a ton of lightning in San Francisco right now!’ Considering that it was 122 degrees Fahrenheit, I had no idea how his phone could withstand the heat rising up from the white-hot salt crystals crunching underfoot. We didn’t know then that those rare bolts were sparking catastrophic wildfires in the counties surrounding our Bay Area home. Nor did we realize that we had a front-row seat to a different face of climate catastrophe, right there in Death Valley—a new world heat record. A breeze picked up, creating a sensation far from pleasant on my skin—the desert may as well have been blasting a million blow-dryers at us. On Sunday, August 16, the thermometer in Death Valley’s aptly named Furnace Creek, right near the hotel where we were staying, hit 130°, the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth.”

The human misery inflicted by these climate change induced catastrophes is on top of the equally catastrophic Covid 19 pandemic that Americans are experiencing across the country. As our death toll approached 200,000, the impact of the illnesses are accompanied by financial distress, hunger, and stress that falls unequally on our citizens. One statistic helps in understanding: Hurricane Harvey in 2017 damaged thousands of homes. Now, three years later,  27% of Hispanics and 20% of Blacks who were displaced by Harvey still live in homes that are unsafe for human habitation and there is little expectation that things will improve for these citizens.

The Sierra Club Insider has undertaken a big project. Here is their plan in their own words as reported on their blog.

“The most meaningful thing we can do right now about tackling climate change is make Donald Trump a one-term president. To do that, we need to get out the vote. Studies show that receiving a personalized letter increases one's likelihood of voting, so we're writing to voters in priority states who we believe are motivated by environmental issues but frequently don’t vote. Our goal is to write and send one million handwritten letters before November 3.”

Although Citizens Climate Lobby is all about a bi-partisan effort to fix climate change, helping to get out the vote sounds like a good idea to me. What say you?