The New York Times and other media are calling the events around Superstorm Sandy "once-in a generation." But whose generation are they talking about?
Perhaps, if you are in your sixties or seventies or eighties, Sandy's destructive forces are a once in your lifetime event. But younger generations -- those of us in our fifties, and our children -- will likely be looking at flooded coastal cities, devastated infrastructure, blown out power, and storm surges for the rest of our lives.
We've got to stop this "angels dancing on the head of a pin" argument about the connections between individual storms and climate change. Scientists can -- and should -- try to parse out each and every contributor to a storm. That's their job. But policy makers cannot afford to do so -- or to wait for definitive answers. The overall picture is dire enough. Our climate is changing, for the worse. Reliability and predictability of climate patterns? That, too, belongs to an older generation. We need only look at the role of warmer North Atlantic ocean temperatures in Sandy's growth to see this.
Just last year, once-in-a-generation Irene arrived -- becoming the fifth-costliest hurricane in U.S. history, causing 49 deaths and 19 billion in damage. But Irene was a breeze by comparison to Sandy. And while we've been changing our climate, we've also been pushing ourselves closer to the edge of urban viability. Here we are digging a new subway -- underground -- in New York. Are we learning nothing about what makes a coastal city vulnerable? For more than a year now, Amtrak riders between Boston and New York have been looking out the window and watching as concrete slabs were hoisted into position -- in what will surely be a vain effort to protect rail beds. A main transportation artery is literally inches from the ocean.
We must stop this "once in a generation" thinking. It is dangerous, misleading, and irresponsible. Those who still believe that the powerful new floods, fires, droughts and storms are once in a generation events are blocking the way to doing something about climate chaos. Perhaps Sandy will finally blow that kind of rhetoric away.