Frances Beinecke at the Natural Resources Defense Council writes Hurricane Sandy hits home:| Some leaders ignore climate change, some belittle it, and others counsel patience. Yet people living in the path of Hurricane Sandy understand that America can't wait any longer to protect our communities from more extreme weather events. [...] Climate change has become pervasive. 'The answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question,' writes Kevin E. Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. 'All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.' I know New York and New Jersey are resilient places. I have seen them recover from terrorist attacks and economic downturns, and I am confident communities up and down the East Coast will recover from Hurricane Sandy. But when will we stop asking them to rebuild in the wake of disasters? When will we start confronting the challenge of climate change before more people are endangered? When will we begin arming our towns and cities with the tools they need to respond to extreme weather? The longer we wait to have an open national conversation about climate change, the more communities will be in harm's way. We live in the richest country in the 21st century. Surely we can have a civil conversation about how to prepare and deal with climate change. We can discuss the science, we can debate the politics, we can dispute the policy measures. But we cannot wait any longer. |
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