Fierce Storms, Including Hurricane Ida, Prompt Governors To Push For More Attention to Climate Change
Northeast pummeled by storm remnants, causing tremendous flooding
The remnants of Hurricane Ida battered the Northeast, leaving massive death, flooding and a stunned populous in its wake.
It's these storms — growing in both frequency and intensity by the year — that have two of the nation's governors hardest hit by the impact of Ida looking for more focus on mitigating global climate change.
Ida brought record-breaking rain, drowning more than 40 people in their homes and cars. No longer classified a hurricane by the time it hit the Northeast, the storm nonetheless killed at least 46 people from Maryland to Connecticut on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, according to news reports.
At least 23 people died in New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said. At least 13 people were killed in New York City, police said, 11 of them in flooded basement apartments, which often serve as relatively affordable homes in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets.
“I have been to so many catastrophic flooding events, from Lake Ontario to Long Island, to now to the city. So, no, this is not unusual any more. Anyone who says it's once in a century, once in 500 years, I’m not buying it. This has to be considered the normal course of business. So we need to take steps to repair,” said Gov Kathy Hochul, who was just sworn in this month as New York's Democratic governor following the resignation of Andrew Cuomo. “We should have evacuation plans that every single homeowner knows about. What you do to do when the water starts rising. Is our communication system adequate to let people in homes and on subways that this is dangerous? Alerts going out on people’s cell phones. How do we communicate and are we doing a good enough job?
“Because I'm not going to be standing here and guarantee it won’t happen again tomorrow. I don't know that. But I know we need to do much more in our resiliency, addressing climate change,” Hochul added.
Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, Murphy was even more pointed about needing intervention to deal with climate change.
“I guess I’ll close with a pretty obvious statement: The world is changing, right? These storms are coming in more frequently. …They’re coming in more frequently. They’re coming in more -- with more intensity. And as it relates to our infrastructure, our resiliency, our whole mind-set, the playbook that we use, we have got to -- we got leap forward and get out ahead of this,” the governor said.
Government must accelerate efforts already underway, Murphy added.
“But the federal infrastructure bill that is being debated, god-willing voted on sooner than later — I should say bills, you’ve got two different buckets there, any amount of that will be of huge help toward our efforts,” he said, referring to both the bipartisan infrastructure plan awaiting action in the House, and a separate $3.5 trillion spending package put together by Senate Democrats which has a strong climate change component.
But even as Murphy and others want to accelerate, Sen Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic senator from West Virginia said just this week that there should be a “pause,” on climate spending.
Do you find this post of value?
Please share it…