Do you remember the days when "weather stories" were almost entirely the bailiwick of local news, not national news. Sure Houston is sucking all the oxygen out of the room today but how many times have you posted NBC Nightly News clips of weather maladies across the United States - storm surges here, heavy rain flooding somewhere else, megadrought in another region, wildfires and such? George Monbiot delivered a pretty scathing op-ed today blaming the media for an unwillingness to mention the role of man-made climate change in these events is "an insult to the victims and a distraction from their urgent need," an orthodoxy that ensures the critical underlying issue won't be raised until the crisis, such as the one now underway in Houston, is long past and largely forgotten in the public mind.
I agree that there is a general failure to mention climate change in these American reports, Mound. The other night, NBC, which is giving pretty comprehensive coverage of the Houston situation, did a segment explaining one of the reasons Houston has such a flooding problem - the fact that due to heavy recent development, the city has 25% less green space to absorb water than it did a few years back. Absolutely no mention of climate change at all.
Then again Houston is an oil town so the officialdom will probably not welcome any discussion of climate change. That sort of talk will have to wait until it's much too late.
I read your post on George Monbiot and then read the entire article, Mound. His piece should be required reading for all who claim to be well-informed, as Houston's reluctance to discuss climate change is one afflicting both the media and those who hold public office almost everywhere in North America and beyond.
I'm trying to make sense of the non-stop attention we're giving Houston and yet how there's almost no mention of the massive flooding in Mumbai that has claimed at least 1,200 lives so far. It's not just the white/non-white reality but also the simple fact that focusing on one without regard to the other really blinds us to the overall picture of what's happening. These severe floods, the Lucifer heatwave across Europe, the inferno that is now the Middle East and southwest Asia, the warming seas especially in the Gulf and America's Atlantic seaboard, the wildfires still burning in my own province, and so much more. Even taking all those impacts collectively in isolation of the companion threats of over-consumption of finite resources and overpopulation thwarts our efforts at mitigation and adaptation.
BTW, I read a good post at Digby's blog where she introduced the triage system to climate change. She breaks it down into mitigation - the stuff that if we act quickly and effectively we can prevent; adaptation - the stuff we cannot prevent but can find ways and means to cope with; and suffering - the impacts we can't resolve from mitigation and have no means of adaptation and will simply have to endure. How many of us, in the context of our grandchildren, can come to grips with that reality?
Your points are well-taken, Mound. Our own ethnocentric natures tend to blind us to the suffering of the larger world around us and, as you make clear, that is all to our detriment. I did see the news story about all of the deaths in Mumbai, and I said to my wife that dwarfs what is happening in Houston, but because they are so far away and are a'foreign' culture, their situation barely registers.
I had not heard of Digby's blog Hullabaloo, but will definitely check it out.
Do you remember the days when "weather stories" were almost entirely the bailiwick of local news, not national news. Sure Houston is sucking all the oxygen out of the room today but how many times have you posted NBC Nightly News clips of weather maladies across the United States - storm surges here, heavy rain flooding somewhere else, megadrought in another region, wildfires and such? George Monbiot delivered a pretty scathing op-ed today blaming the media for an unwillingness to mention the role of man-made climate change in these events is "an insult to the victims and a distraction from their urgent need," an orthodoxy that ensures the critical underlying issue won't be raised until the crisis, such as the one now underway in Houston, is long past and largely forgotten in the public mind.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is a general failure to mention climate change in these American reports, Mound. The other night, NBC, which is giving pretty comprehensive coverage of the Houston situation, did a segment explaining one of the reasons Houston has such a flooding problem - the fact that due to heavy recent development, the city has 25% less green space to absorb water than it did a few years back. Absolutely no mention of climate change at all.
DeleteThen again Houston is an oil town so the officialdom will probably not welcome any discussion of climate change. That sort of talk will have to wait until it's much too late.
DeleteI read your post on George Monbiot and then read the entire article, Mound. His piece should be required reading for all who claim to be well-informed, as Houston's reluctance to discuss climate change is one afflicting both the media and those who hold public office almost everywhere in North America and beyond.
DeleteI'm trying to make sense of the non-stop attention we're giving Houston and yet how there's almost no mention of the massive flooding in Mumbai that has claimed at least 1,200 lives so far. It's not just the white/non-white reality but also the simple fact that focusing on one without regard to the other really blinds us to the overall picture of what's happening. These severe floods, the Lucifer heatwave across Europe, the inferno that is now the Middle East and southwest Asia, the warming seas especially in the Gulf and America's Atlantic seaboard, the wildfires still burning in my own province, and so much more. Even taking all those impacts collectively in isolation of the companion threats of over-consumption of finite resources and overpopulation thwarts our efforts at mitigation and adaptation.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I read a good post at Digby's blog where she introduced the triage system to climate change. She breaks it down into mitigation - the stuff that if we act quickly and effectively we can prevent; adaptation - the stuff we cannot prevent but can find ways and means to cope with; and suffering - the impacts we can't resolve from mitigation and have no means of adaptation and will simply have to endure. How many of us, in the context of our grandchildren, can come to grips with that reality?
Your points are well-taken, Mound. Our own ethnocentric natures tend to blind us to the suffering of the larger world around us and, as you make clear, that is all to our detriment. I did see the news story about all of the deaths in Mumbai, and I said to my wife that dwarfs what is happening in Houston, but because they are so far away and are a'foreign' culture, their situation barely registers.
DeleteI had not heard of Digby's blog Hullabaloo, but will definitely check it out.
.. 'triage' .. exactly .. !
ReplyDelete