The Question

Calhoun’s Cannons for November 3, 2012

It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

     Upton Sinclair

O.K. Congress, The Question: Is New Jersey wet enough for you?

It’s a fair question for an elective body that is filled with Climate Deniers, including some of whom are serving on, of all things, the science and energy committees. Really?  Science Committees?  Only in America.  

New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, already has an answer.  Ditto, New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg and so, I suspect, does Republican New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, who originally stumped for climate-change derider, Mitt Romney.  But now Christie’s standing next to President Obama and no doubt thanking his lucky stars that Mitt Romney didn’t get a chance to defund and privitize FEMA.  Well, of all the governors and mayors in America, who better than these guys to start  coming up with answers to that basic question.

In the great Blizzard of 1888, New York was totally paralyzed and decided that it had better put all its utilities and a good chunk of its transportation underground so as to not get caught again by snow.  So it dug tunnels and subway tubes and criss-crossed its landscape with what are basically huge underground pipes that are now filled up with water.

Water.  Rain and storm surge from a rising sea level, all of which arrived last week and will continue to arrive with increasingly ferocious regularity.  Unlike their Washington counterparts, Cuomo, and Bloomberg and, I suspect, Christie get it.  And are now finally discussing the obvious – New Jersey has now become our New Normal and we’d better deal with it.

Which is a shocking statement of fact that had a good many conservative Washington Pols twittering nervously.  The House of The Koch Brothers is a flimsy carbon burning structure that stays alive only because of our corrupt and corrupting election processes.  Pols gotta dance with them what bought ‘em and nobody pays better than Big Oil and Coal.  So it’s no wonder that so much of Congress is blind, willfully blind, embarrassingly blind, destructively blind, hiding in the closet with their money and their eyes scrunched shut, thinking the storms won’t find them there.

And now here comes The Guvs and the Mayors, like some kind of modern day Alice in Wonderland pointing out the obvious – Your house, my house, all our houses are nothing but a pack of cards.  They cannot hold. 

The Pentagon figured that out a few years ago.  They’ve been writing White papers for some time detailing exactly how Global Climate Change is a severe national security threat.  The Seabees know about pipes and tunnels and sea surges and high ground.  They’ve been looking at the coasts of America and what they’ve been seeing for some time now is New Jersey, writ large. 

Ditto for the insurance companies.  More quiet samizdat White Papers have been making the rounds: Private insurance companies are realizing that they cannot cover their bets, cannot afford to keep writing paper like they have been, too many “at risk” properties, too many “pre-existing conditions,” too many “New Jerseys” and “fire-stormed” Colorados and “crop-loss” Iowas.  Which means that Americans will soon find that they will no longer be “in safe hands,” and the fine print in their various insurance policies will start getting smaller, more expensive, and more convoluted until translated into the obvious:  Sorry, we no longer cover that . . . whatever it is . . .  and neither does any insurance company in the world.   

Welcome to Climate Change America. Where pivoting seriously to non-carbon burning energy will be expensive while NOT pivoting will be even more expensive, because, one way or the other, Mother Nature will be paid.

And so the Question to Congress. Is New Jersey finally wet enough for you?