We now know that while Osama bin Laden and Sad­dam Hus­sein didn’t con­spire together, they did have one thing in com­mon: their power was funded by our depen­dence on their oil. But even as Saddam’s show trial begins, tele­vi­sions are watch­ing America’s new national secu­rity ene­mies: Kat­rina and Wilma. Al Qaida’s 9/11 attacks and the Sad­dam Hussein’s dic­ta­tor­ship were “pow­ered by” oil indus­try for­tunes and short-sighted global energy poli­cies, the same poli­cies now bring­ing us global warm­ing and mon­ster storms.
Before mak­ing land­fall in Mexico’s Yucatan and pound­ing Florida, Hur­ri­cane Wilma was declared the most pow­er­ful Atlantic hur­ri­cane in his­tory. That we got to a W-name itself is cause for con­cern: the first trop­i­cal storm of the year gets a name start­ing with “A” and so forth through the alpha­bet. This sum­mer has been the “most active hur­ri­cane season”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Atlantic_hurricane_season since record-keeping started 150 years ago. We’ve seen so many storms that weather offi­cials have now run through the alpha­bet: mete­o­rol­o­gists are now hav­ing to track Trop­i­cal Storm (now Depres­sion) Alpha 350 miles north of the Bahamas. In 2004, “five dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­canes ripped across Florida”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Atlantic_hurricane_season, each one com­ing so fast on the heels of the last that few of us could even name them a year later. As I write, Wilma is pound­ing West­ern Florida, one of the fast-growing regions in the coun­try. And of course Kat­rina dev­asted New Orleans and the Gulf Coast just two months ago.
Global cli­mate change is here. After decades of polit­i­cal hem­ming and haw­ing, only the most slimy of oil indus­try apol­o­gists (and Pres­i­dents) could argue that global warm­ing hasn’t arrived. We’ve built a national cul­ture built on inef­fi­cient burn­ing of fos­sil fuels. Devel­op­ers put more and more peo­ple on unpro­tected sand­bars built, main­tained and insured by tax dol­lars. Some­day is here and our weather is only going to be get­ting worse. We could be prepar­ing for the inevitable adjust­ments. We could be invest­ing in con­ser­va­tion, in renew­able ener­gies. We could change our tax codes to encour­age sus­tain­able hous­ing: not just get­ting new devel­op­ment off beaches but also build­ing urban and semi-urban com­mu­ni­ties that reduce auto­mo­bile depen­dence.
Instead we spend bil­lions of dol­lars on our oil addic­tions. We’re now wait­ing for the “announce­ment of the 2,000th U.S. mil­i­tary casu­alty in iraq”:http://www.afsc.org/2000/. Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials used Kat­rina to roll­back envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion reg­u­la­tions in Louisiana. The arc­tic ice cap is rapidly melt­ing away (the North Pole is now ice-free for part of the year) but oil indus­try offi­cials point to the good news that we will soon be able to put “year-round oil rigs in the ice-free seas there”:http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1010–07.htm.
How many Kat­rina bin Laden’s and Sad­dam Wilma’s does it take before we get the news.