[Vision2020] Nature Votes Last

[Art Deco]

[image: Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the
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November 1, 2012, 9:00 pmNature Votes LastBy TIMOTHY
EGAN<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/timothy-egan/>

A catastrophic storm has no feelings, no fury, no compassion and certainly
no political position. Hurricanes may sound like bridge partners at the
Boca community center - Sandy, Irene and Katrina - until they land and
become monsters. The mistake, perhaps, is trying to anthropomorphize them.

But that doesn't mean that a fatal blow from Mother Nature will not alter
the course of human nature. When the seas rose earlier this week, swamping
the world's greatest city and battering a helpless state, the turbulence of
the elements washed away the sand castles of politics.

Climate change is to the Republican base what leprosy once was to healthy
humans - untouchable and unmentionable. Their party is financed by people
whose fortunes are dependent upon denying that humans have caused the
earth's weather patterns to change for the worse.

At the same time, Republicans have spent the last year trying to win an
argument about the role of government as a helping hand. By now, most
people know that Mitt Romney, in his base-pandering mode during the
primaries, made the federal disaster agency FEMA sound like a costly
nuisance, better off orphaned to the states or the private sector.

His party can get away with fact-denial - in global warming's case - and
win cable-television arguments about FEMA, so long as something like a
major news event, e.g., reality, does not shatter the picture. That's where
the storm upset a somewhat predictable race.

Did global warming cause Sandy to be so massive, so destructive, so
unfathomable? There's no consensus on this specific storm. But virtually
every reputable atmospheric scientist who is not tied by money to an oil or
coal company says that this week's storm is a picture of what's to come, if
not already here. Many of the world's premier cities, New York foremost
among them, are at the mercy of the rising seas that accompany a hotter
earth. Record low levels of sea ice in the Arctic and record warm
temperatures in the Atlantic were likely part of the brew that contributed
to Sandy's very high storm surge.

"There has been a series of extreme weather incidents," said New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday, stating the obvious. "This is not a political
statement. This is a factual statement. Anyone who says there is not a
dramatic change in weather patterns I think is denying reality."

President Obama has been silent on this issue of great import to his
children, Sasha and Malia, and their children. He is afraid of those
pockets of coal-mining, climate-change-denying voters in Virginia,
Pennsylvania and Ohio. After the election, I suspect, he will be more
vocal. A profile in courage he is not, but at least his party has some
smart advocates for treating the patient before the meteorological malady
kills it.

The other cherished idea of Republicans that was thrown to Sandy's winds is
the notion that people don't need government in times of domestic trauma.
Let the soup-can brigades, the church volunteers and the Red Cross handle
it. When the full bill for New Jersey's recovery comes due, no single state
or private entity in the land will able to come close to paying for it. And
that forces a basic question: do the other states, bound to the union of a
single country, have a responsibility to pay for one that has been mortally
wounded?

Ayn Rand is having her "Mad Men" revivalist moment in the Republican Party,
led by social Darwinists like Paul Ryan. These people genuinely do believe
that life is a battle between achievers and moochers, and that luck, good
or bad, has little to do with it. Compassion is for wussies, and tax
dollars from those at the top should not be used to help those who are
struggling.

Of late, we've seen the "hate of all nature," as one old-timer called the
Dust Bowl, visit nearly every part of the United States. Texas was on fire
for much of a year while its governor, Rick Perry, denied climate change
and signed an official proclamation calling for a day of prayer for rain.
The Midwest saw the worst drought in 70 years. Entire subdivisions in the
Rockies were wiped out by wildfire.

In these precincts of extreme trauma, government haters became government
lovers. In the reddest of Western counties after a big fire, in which many
a home was saved by many a yellow-shirted hero, you always see these
banners thanking the government for sending in rescuers with axes and
shovels.

But over time, and with dismal repetition, will extreme natural disasters
become like school shootings, with little thought given to the larger
significance? Perhaps not yet. After the 1989 earthquake briefly halted the
World Series, T-shirts soon appeared with these words: "Nature Bats Last."
In the election of 2012, it looks like nature votes last.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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