This week’s landfall of hurricane Sandy in New York and surrounding areas is a reminder of nature’s awesome power. The storm wrought devastation on an epic scale, smashing homes and businesses, and inundating whole coastal districts, including parts of the nation’s financial capital. More than 70 lives have been lost.
As one might expect from a country with America’s can-do spirit, the response has been impressive. Not only have the emergency services performed heroics, the clean-up has proceeded apace. Only days after much of New York’s subway system was submerged under feet of water, large parts have returned to service. But even this burst of resolve cannot disguise a bigger inconvenient truth: that New York and much of the eastern seaboard lie increasingly at nature’s mercy.
New Yorkers do not need long memories to recall the last inundation. Flood surges have become part of the warp and weft of city life. Whether human activity is responsible for the extreme weather events that lie at the root of this, no one can dispute that they are occurring more frequently as a result of climate change.