Right now my mother in law is staying with us for several days. There’s a Nor’easter sliding up the coast again, and it’s about taking precautions.
She lives in Westchester County, NY which got hit hard by a Nor’easter last week. Elderly, with some mobility issues, being without power for several days (and there are people still out) — it’s not a good thing. That’s why we brought her up here, a bit farther north from the heaviest snow.
This isn’t to make light of people fleeing extended droughts, floods, hurricanes, storm surge, tornadoes, etc. It’s to point out that a changing climate affects everyone to some degree. It hits the poor, the elderly, the disabled harder. It’s also to point out the disruptions are going to become more frequent, and push the extremes.
Only last month there was a day when it hit 70° in upstate New York. The next day was 40 degrees colder. The Polar Vortex is messed up. (England got hammered last month. It’s a hemisphere thing.) Other parts of the world are having different issues, and it’s not just humans that are affected. It’s every living thing
What’s In The Cards
Meanwhile, doing something about climate change has to call for both immediate and long term actions. People have to pay more attention to being prepared for emergencies — because they are going to become more frequent. Beyond that, there are going to be events that are unprecedented, because normal weather patterns are breaking down.
In the short term, people in New England are coping with storm surges that have flooded coastal areas. There will have to be immediate clean up — and long term plans to either relocate people, or take expensive measures to mitigate the risks from rising seas and changing weather.
There will be increasing shocks to the economy: roads closing, air and train cancellations, businesses that lose productivity while their workforce copes with the weather, consumer spending shifts as people have to spend on repairs and clean up, etc.
Along with these short term events, longer term disruptions are taking place. Growing seasons are shifting. Disease and pest patterns are shifting. Water supplies are in jeopardy as expectations on historic rain patterns fail to manifest on schedule. Air conditioning demands as summers get hotter will put increasing strain on power systems. And so on and so on.
In the long term, if we do nothing, America and the world are going to be radically reshaped by cascading effects of climate change from global warming. There will be massive disruptions and conflict as countries struggle to cope. It will be world-wide. We can chose to let it happen and pay the price, or we can chose to spend on shaping it in a better direction. Either choice is going to cost us — but doing nothing will cost us more. It’s too late to avoid the consequences of climate change. We are already experiencing them. Denial is not a viable solution.
Doing Something
There’s a concept that’s going to be increasingly in the news as what the climate is doing becomes harder to ignore: resiliency. It means making everything more able to cope with the changes that are coming. It means doing things according to the usual standards is no longer prudent.
Government must start the massive investments in infrastructure to make it more resilient. One example related to the flooding link above is simple to understand, but not cheap to implement. How much damage will have to take place before it is addressed? Thousands of people going without power for days — is it time to start mandating power lines be buried wherever practical? Who will pay? How will they pay?
It’s also about doing something about the main driver of climate change: human activities and greenhouse gases. Investments in resiliency should incorporate greenhouse gas reductions, as well as directly addressing emissions. Transportation is one area that can use a lot of work. A few numbers:
America is a Nation on the move. About 28% of the energy we use goes to transporting people and goods from one place to another.
Cars, vans, and buses are commonly used to carry people. Trucks, airplanes, and trains can be used to carry people and freight. Barges and pipelines only carry freight. In 2008, there were 250 million vehicles (cars, buses, and trucks) in the United States - more than three motor vehicles for every four people.
Automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, and buses traveled just over 3.0 trillion miles in the United States in 2008. That's almost one-twelfth the distance to the nearest star beyond the solar system. It's like driving to the sun and back 13,440 times.
emphasis added
Steel wheels on steel rails are one of the most energy efficient ways to move people and goods — but we’ve spent the last century doing our best to drive railroads out of business in America. Everything that competes with them is subsidized with taxpayer money. Trains move slower today because they’ve been forced to focus on shipping bulk cargo that isn’t time critical. Tracks for high speeds are more expensive to maintain; the market forces that prevail today don’t justify the investment.
Our cities, suburbs, towns have been shaped by the automobile; it’s very difficult to live and work in America without a car, except in those few places with mass transit. Highways go everywhere — but we’ve reached the point where we can’t afford to keep them up.
There is one answer: Solutionary Rail. It’s a set of proposals that work together to cut railroad greenhouse gas emissions to zero, give people transportation choices in addition to highways or flying, speed up railroads so they can go after all kinds of freight, bring wind power to more of the country, and revitalize regions that have been left behind. It’s a comprehensive set of solutions that address political and financial as well as engineering concerns. And unlike Hyperloop or high speed bullet trains, it can be done by upgrading existing rail corridors.
The Netherlands already have something like this — they’ve electrified their rail system and run it all on wind power.
Eneco and NS said on a joint website that some 600,000 passengers daily are "the first in the world" to travel thanks to wind energy. NS operates about 5,500 train trips a day.
One windmill running for an hour can power one train across some 200 kilometres (120 miles), the companies said. They now hope to reduce the energy used per passenger by 35 percent by 2020 compared with 2005.
Even without the investment called for in Solutionary Rail, the rails we have now can contribute to resiliency. When mudslides closed a major California highway in January, Amtrak and other railroads added more trains and ran longer trains. Some of them were standing room only.
Prior to Thursday, rides on whale-watching boats between the harbors at Ventura and Santa Barbara were to only direct way around the complete closure of all roads on the eastern edge of Santa Barbara, including the 101 Freeway, normally used by 100,000 vehicles per day. The alternate was a 275- mile detour over the Grapevine and a narrow country highway west of Bakersfield, that quickly overloaded.
Coping with climate change is going to require big plans, and small steps, and everything in between. It won’t happen overnight, but it won’t happen at all if no one takes the first steps wherever they are, no matter how small. The anti-government spending brainwashing of America makes it difficult to get anyone to support anything for the public good. The endless promotion of Ayn Randian self-interest above all has gotten people out of the habit of thinking of anything except their own desires. It goes right along with the narcissism that seems to be on its way to becoming a norm.
Speaking of which...
One example of how not to prepare for the 21st Century is on painful display in New York State.
At this time, three heritage railroads in New York State are in jeopardy: two in the Adirondacks and one in the Catskills. All three are facing demands from the trail lobby to rip up the tracks — and government at state and county levels is ready to accede to them. The end result will be to bar those areas to anyone who doesn’t have a car, or doesn’t want to ride a bus. It means everything in and out of those regions will be moving on rubber tires on pavement.
Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing through state land management regulations to make it easier to rip up the tracks in the Adirondacks after losing in court over that issue last year.
I’ve been putting a lot of effort to try to save the rail corridor in the Catskills: New York City is paying the county to rip out tracks that have run along the Ashokan Reservoir for 100 years; the County Executive is fully on board with it, and has trail fanatics lined up firmly behind him. They’ve deliberately chosen to rip out the tracks in a way that will keep the current tourist rail service running out of Kingston, NY well short of being able to connect with the trail network they’re going to build. The county has chosen to ignore a lot of inconvenient legal niceties...
Elsewhere the locomotives used by Amtrak to provide Empire Service are wearing out and New York State has yet to provide plans to replace them. Upstate Amtrak service is a fraction of what it could and should be. The vital Hudson River tunnels are in danger of collapse - with the Federal Government backing away from helping finance repair. The New York City Subways are in need of massive rehabilitation. The Long Island Railroad needs more rolling stock and motive power. CSX Railroad's troublesome performance is hurting the state's economic competitiveness.
But with all of the issues noted above, Governor Cuomo’s plan to cover New York State with a network of trails proceeds apace. No other country in the world is tearing up railroads or allowing them to deteriorate; they're investing in them to build infrastructure for the 21st Century.
Bread and Circuses.
Meanwhile, the power is still on. My mother in law is sitting back watching Bonanza while the weather dumps tons of unseasonable snow on the region. (Ben Cartwright is having a hard time getting a full night’s sleep.)
And the planet keeps warming.
UPDATE: A few climate stories via the NY Times:
‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This’: Snow Brings Rural U.K. to a Halt
Northeast Storm Live Updates: A Warning That Conditions Will ‘Get a Lot Worse’