In a climate change WTF, Houston displays the face of America’s climate change future.
Tired of repeated battering by over-energized storms, flailing about seeking solutions to its self induced wounds, the oil and gas hub seeks to form another committee to explore options for remediating the accelerating destruction from repeated storms fostered by anthropogenic forcing of the radiative balance (the climate crisis).
For over two decades, we have been told the destruction from every storm type gets worse, over time, due to anthropogenic climate change. So well we see, thanks to Houston, the frequency of storms increases as well—and coming soon to your neighborhood.
More intense storms mixed with a higher frequency of destruction has no good end for us.
Houston is experiencing, right now, how repairs to infrastructure caused by energized climate events cannot complete quick enough, and, as Houston is experiencing right now, the repeated assaults on infrastructure before remediation activities complete leads to an overall degradation of city services, infrastructure, societal acceptance of the business-as-usual rhetoric, and civilized behavior.
Once triage mentality sets in (that’s the the next step), as it has in places like Brazil, Mexico, and alike, the quantity (and intensity) of problems accelerates into a death spiral for all members of all classes in cities. And keep this in mind, these are the “good ol’ days of climate change”. It gets exponentially uglier from here on—and coming soon to your neighborhood.
Houston, due to its economic base of oil and gas production provides us further insight with another aspect of the climate disaster as well. Effectively dealing with climate change in 2024 means we must obliterate our use of fossil fuels immediately—and how in the name of Quixote are the Houston civic leaders going to push a campaign to move people to EVs and other solutions that eliminate the use of fossil fuels? Even if such a program could get going in Houston-Texas, the economic destruction would be immense. On the other hand, the destruction from anthropogenic forcing of the radiative balance (the climate crisis) will be immense-squared. Try explaining that to an EXXON investor or an M&A person.
Every day that we generate more GHGs than the planet’s climate sinks can absorb, the choices Houston, and America, can consider narrows as the climate crisis intensifies. Had the fossil fuels companies not engaged in their treasonous propaganda effort to downplay the science of climate change, thereby hiding awareness of, among other items, the severity of destruction from increasingly frequent disasters on the nation, we would be decades ahead of where we are now.
Then there’s that part of the fossil fuel propaganda effort that is the litany on how the global climate crisis will affect poor nations far more than rich nations. Well, considering how far Houston has to fall–and the resulting social chaos sure to follow—living with a bunch of neighbors in a poor rural setting seems a lot more stable in the coming years than downtown Houston. Or any other major city for that matter. Ironically, Houston will come to show all that poor rural is much better than city-tech for dealing with the climate-storm rebuild problem. Poor Houston.
The path through this mess begins with EV, PV, batteries, and strong neighborhoods; the first three, are going to be a hell of a lot easier to implement than the last one. Not to worry, we will get there. It’s just a question of how much suffering, death, and destruction all social classes will endure before the media-blessing occurs, allowing our society’s embrace of the 1990’s awareness that we are all in deep guano and unless we fix it, we are terminal.
On a positive note, we here at the Climatebull want to call out Houston for their climate leadership–and thank Houston for its leadership on making clear our egalitarian future.
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