After the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shutdown of much of New York City by Sandy in 2012, and now the devastation wrought on Texas by Harvey, the U.S. can and should do better.
I sometimes wish we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening-you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth-that would get people very concerned about climate change.
I remember being in my house from when I was, like, five to when I was, like, 12. When hurricanes would happen, you just hold hands, and you say, 'You know what, we have each other. We're praying,' and this roof can literally peel off of your house.
Our agricultural economy in the Hudson Valley continues to face historically low prices and producer income, as well as losses due to weather and other disasters.
Remember...this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.
When farmers and ranchers are confronted by weather-related disasters that are beyond their control, we need to do something to help.
I have talked to people across the country struggling in the face of an altered climate. New Jersey homeowners are trying to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy. Miami government officials are trying to plan for rising seas and flooded streets. California farmers are trying to make it through the state's worst drought on record.
Events like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy were unlike any weather disasters before. They showed the world who suffers the most from the impacts of extreme weather: low-income families and communities of color.
All countries will feel the increasing effects of dangerous climate change and it is those least able to bear it who are already being hurt first and hardest.
In the U.S. alone, weather disasters caused $50 billion in economic damages in 2010.
In the last two years 24 countries have set new all-time temperature records. We've seen flooding on an epic scale in every continent .
As hurricanes Katrina and Rita raged through the southeastern United States last summer, much of America's energy infrastructure based in the Gulf of Mexico was damaged or destroyed causing gas prices to soar.
It is perfectly obvious that no one nor any single country can save the world from the horrors of tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and winged influenza.
I've been through quite a few hurricanes. I worked in North Carolina, where there's a housing development whose name was Landfall.
Every day, it seems, a new extreme weather catastrophe happens somewhere in America, and the media's all over it, profiling the ordinary folks wiped out by forest fires, droughts, floods, massive sinkholes, tornadoes.
