É o verão aqui nos EUA. Faça um desembarque, observando -o fabricar algumas centenas de quilômetros ao sul em algum lugar sobre Hispaniola e a Península de Yucatán. Da família Marsaud em nossos livros de texto francês? Claudette afetará quatro estados costeiros-Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama e Flórida durante um período de três dias, despejando 20 polegadas de chuva e ventos em rajadas superiores a 40 km / h. Este ano, uma área do tamanho de Lancashire foi destruída por incêndios florestais, à medida que as condições secas do Tinder se estendem do Arizona, Novo México e Texas, no sul da Califórnia e até Los Angeles. Isso é o dobro da terra queimada que os estados esperariam nessa época do ano. Eles apontam para o aumento da intensidade e frequência de eventos climáticos extremos - ondas de calor, fortes chuvas e furacões como sinais de que algo deve ser feito.
Schools are breaking up and the kids are being dispatched to camp or loaded into SUVs and ferried to the beach, the lake, the mountains or distant grandparents homes.
It is also the start of extreme weather season.
Here on the Gulf Coast, we are bracing for the first named storm of the season to make landfall, watching it brew a few hundred miles to the south somewhere over Hispaniola and the Yucatan Peninsula.
Storms are now so frequent and numerous they are named alphabetically so you can distinguish them and they can be memorialized in history.
This current depression rolling through the Gulf of Mexico has been given the alluring name of Claudette – remember the cool Parisienne girl from the Marsaud family in our French text books?
Her predecessors in this storm season, Ana and Bill, both fizzled out over the ocean but she is forecast to strike the Louisiana Coast later this week
But don’t be fooled – despite the cute name, these storms are huge. Claudette will impact four coastal states – Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida over a three-day period, dumping 20 inches of rain and gusting winds in excess of 40mph.
Meanwhile on the West Coast, the driest winter on record has created drought conditions and rising temperatures have state and federal officials worried about severe wildfires. Already this year an area the size of Lancashire has been destroyed by wildfires as tinder dry conditions stretch from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas through Southern California and as far as Los Angeles. This is twice as much scorched earth as the states would have expected by this time in the year.
And America’s antiquated electricity network creaks and groans every time there is a storm, meaning rolling blackouts are now a part of summer living US style.
So, while President Biden is focussing on an economic recovery post-COVID 19 – scientists are warning about the cost of unchecked climate crises. They point to the increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events – heatwaves, heavy downpours and hurricanes as signs that something must be done.
Esses eventos também estão tendo um enorme impacto financeiro. O Center for Energy and Climate Solutions relata que a Administração Nacional Oceânica e Atmosférica (NOAA) - a agência governamental responsável pelo rastreamento de dados climáticos e climáticos - conhece o custo real. Restauração e reconstrução. Seus custos não incluem os custos médicos e de saúde ou o impacto devastador da perda de vidas. Em 2017, o furacão Harvey devastou Houston, Texas, antes de agitar em muitos estados do sul, causando um número econômico semelhante.
The NOAA calculates the total costs – insured and uninsured – of climate events to residential, commercial and government buildings, assets, infrastructure, energy platforms, agricultural and forest land as well as the cost of business interruption, restoration and rebuilding. Their costs don’t include the healthcare and medical costs or the devastating impact of loss of life.
The most expensive storm to date – 2005’s Hurricane Katrina – inflicted $170billion in economic impact as well as a reported 1800 deaths from the storm. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey ravaged Houston,Texas before rampaging across many of the Southern states causing a similar economic toll.
So with annual estimates of climate crises being around the trillion-dollar mark, the President’s plan to fortify the nation’s power and energy infrastructure is not only good for jobs and pandemic recovery, it will help prepare America to manage and deal with future events better.
Biden’s plan – called The America Jobs Plan (AJP) – would position the U.S. for success in the 21st century by investing in inter-regional electric transmission and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for the folks that build it, while providing cheaper, cleaner electricity and bolstering electricity system reliability.
On the west coast, electricity is mudou -se de um lado para o outro através de enormes grades do noroeste do Pacífico até a Califórnia para os estados do sudoeste, conforme necessário. Mas com as crises climáticas atingindo todos esses lugares ao mesmo tempo, simplesmente não há energia confiável suficiente para dar a volta. O Texas, que perdeu muito de seu poder durante uma tempestade de inverno no início deste ano, tem uma grade desconectada para os estados vizinhos - em grande parte para fins políticos - e encontrou seus moradores deixados sem calor e luz por semanas como resultado. 27% dos proprietários americanos relataram que estavam tendo dificuldade em encontrar seguro para suas propriedades e 26% disseram que seus prêmios aumentaram nos últimos doze meses. premiums.”
And these climate conditions are also making it difficult or impossible for homeowners in U.S. to get adequate insurance. 27% of American homeowners reported they were having difficulty finding insurance for their property and 26% said their premiums had increased in the past twelve months.
Yale University Environment blog stated:
“Many insurance companies are choosing not to renew homeowner policies in areas with increased risks of wildfires, sea level rise, or other natural disasters, or are significantly raising premiums.”
And earlier this month, the United States Treasury Department’s Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance recommended the Government get involved in the issue, requesting the Federal Insurance Office begin a study of “the availability and affordability of residential property insurance”.
While the Government can invest and legislate to ease the burden, it is going to take some serious lifestyle changes for America to control the extreme weather this part of the globe experiências. Em geral, estamos relutantes em fazer com que o vínculo entre nosso amor por SUVs, frotas de carros familiares e ar condicionado tudo com o clima estranho do lado de fora da nossa janela. O aumento repentino dos preços dos produtos em nossos supermercados é um resultado direto da destruição de muitas terras agrícolas primárias por incêndio ou seca e as altas contas de serviços públicos, seguros e custos domésticos também são ligados diretamente. Ele disse à mídia no recente evento da G & que as autoridades do Pentágono consideram as mudanças climáticas a "maior ameaça" à segurança nacional dos EUA nos próximos anos. Vamos torcer para que ele seja capaz de levar sua conta do AJP pelo Congresso nos próximos meses e iniciar a tarefa complicada de tirar o calor dos verões sufocos da América. Downtown in Business
The President at least has acknowledged the problem, unlike his predecessor. He told media at the recent G& event, that Pentagon officials consider climate change to be the “greatest threat” to America’s national security in the coming years. Let’s hope he is able to push his AJP bill through Congress in the coming months and start the tricky task of taking the heat out of America’s sweltering summers.
