Climate Crisis Comes Home

A lot of poorer countries already suffering from effects of the climate crisis are justifiably upset that bigger and richer countries--principally the United States--have contributed much more to the crisis but aren't paying much of a price to address it.  Well, there's some solace in a few stats from 2012.

NOAA announced  Monday that 2012 was the hottest year in the contiguous U.S. since its record-keeping began in 1895.  It was 1 degree F hotter than the previous record-holder (1998) and 3.3 degrees hotter than the average year.  It was also a very dry year.

All that had consequences.  According to Climatewire a few days ago, it was also a banner year for weather-causes disasters, mostly in the U.S., with the U.S. sustaining 90% of the insured losses.  The average year is 65%.

Insurers are still tallying the October storm's impact, but it's expected to cost the industry $25 billion or more, surpassing the financial losses of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and perhaps even topping the wreckage of Florida's Hurricane Andrew of 1992. Sandy promises to be the second or third costliest disaster in U.S. history. Its total economic costs are estimated to be more than $50 billion.

But the second most expensive weather related disaster in the world last year was the drought in the U.S. midwest.  Its insured losses topped $20 billion.

Meanwhile, by one measure, media coverage of the climate crisis decreased slightly last year, and by a couple of other measures, increased slightly.  But the increases are interesting.  Many more stories related weather related disasters to the climate crisis, and the New York Times began covering the climate crisis as a beat, not just a subject.  That's a development that should affect U.S. media coverage in general in 2013.

Although this change at the Times has been in the works for awhile, Sandy probably changed forever how the New York-based U.S. media covers the climate crisis.  More effects like those that cost all that money as well as pain and suffering last year will only accelerate that change. Meanwhile, that the U.S. is feeling the impacts is not in itself a cause for joy anywhere, but it may well help this country finally face its twin responsibilities, of seriously addressing both the causes and effects of the climate crisis.

It's oddly like the situation with gun violence in the U.S.  The horror of Newtown was the Sandy equivalent in focusing feeling and attention.  In both cases, what's politically possible will not entirely address the problem, but any positive action may well save some lives, and save some people from pain.  The difference is that what is actually possible could reduce gun violence substantially.  But nothing known is going to prevent further climate crisis effects for many years, nor change what is already happening for centuries.  But the analogy still holds: things can still be done to make things better.  And in the case of the climate crisis, save the far future for humanity and life as we know it on Earth.