The Witness Chronicles, 10/11/24

Climate change finally becomes a political issue

Photo by Dan Cutler on Unsplash

“Zillow will now show climate risk data on home listings”

Washington Post, 10/11/2024

That headline, buried on today’s Post front page, caught my eye as I was reading about the tornados associated with Hurricane Milton, which appear to have been responsible for most of the deaths, so far.

In the past month we have experienced definitive proof that climate change is running at full throttle, though if you didn’t think that earlier you must have been living under a rock. Or listening to Donald Trump, who only sees disasters as opportunities to enrich and promote himself.

This time around in Florida, the media did not run as many of those clips of people standing in front of ruined homes and lives, vowing to rebuild. The reason was simple. They have no insurance and cannot get any, at any price. They are truly ruined.

The tornado outbreak that preceded Milton was unusual, so unusual that NBC weather guru Al Roker called them “unprecedented”. Watching it unfold in real time first it was six, then ten, and then the storm hit. Now they say as many as 40 tornadoes touched down, most on the outskirts of the projected storm where people were not expecting them.

They also crossed freeways choked with cars fleeing the coming hurricane, a truly apocalyptic scene straight out of a movie. Twisters 3, anyone?

We are in new territory with storms like Helene and Milton because their effects are so far ranging. Helene turned into a storm 1300 miles wide that parked over one third of the country, dumping rain in places that had never seen anything like it. Milton crossed Florida and stayed a Hurricane all the way across and out into the Atlantic.

Thankfully, the expected storm surge was less than predicted, but the damage was still extensive. In places it dropped eighteen inches of rain on already soaked soil from Helene. Flooding may remain in place for weeks. And there were those tornados.

Now the leading real estate website will rate homes based on their vulnerability to extreme weather events. And this, like the inability to buy insurance in those areas, will change the demographics of our country, and the world.

We now have danger zones and climate havens, except that we’ve seen places like Asheville, NC, once considered the latter, devastated.

When businesses like Zillow, and all the major insurers, huge corporations, are deciding they can’t do business in certain places, or telling people not to move there, the problem becomes very real.

Very few places in the US are protected from these changes. Even Western New York, where I live, had 15 small tornados in one outbreak this past summer, an unheard of event here. In fifty years I can remember a handful of tiny twisters. And this is one of those rare places that can still claim climate haven status.

What does that phrase mean? Abundant access to clean water. Low vulnerability to fires, mudslides, hurricanes, and other extreme and deadly weather events. In our case we have had flooding but its reach has been limited, so far.

So far. Ashville believed the ‘so far’. The reality is the choice is the lesser of two evils. Climate change is more than extreme weather. One example is the disease carrying ticks that have migrated to our woodlands as warming made our winters more hospitable.

A hike in the woods on a lovely day now carries the risk of contracting a debilitating disease. A friend recently purchased fifteen acres of beautiful woodlands in the Finger Lakes. You can’t walk there without wearing a lot of clothing and carefully inspecting yourself after every exposure.

That may not compare to losing everything, but it definitely affects the quality of daily life for many.

In the face of doom and gloom we are told by a major presidential candidate, and the governor of Florida, that climate change is a hoax. DeSantis in Florida banned the use of the phrase ‘climate change’ in any government document.

Now, that is what I call an effective deterrent.

This may not be an issue that is front and center when you go to vote, but it will be, and we cannot let politicians who deny it run our country. If it’s not too late that is.

It might be, but why take chances on those guys who tell you the events of the past few weeks are a hoax, somehow perpetrated by Democrats. I mean, really?

Really.

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