“Apocalypse NY,” a Daily News headline declared last week. Hurricane Sandy’s devastation was centered on the New York metropolitan area, including the New Jersey suburbs. Across many states, millions suffered from the storm, and the whole nation grasped its historic scale. But New York City itself defined the catastrophe. Photos of a vast deathscape in fire-ravaged Breezy Point, where most of a hundred homes were destroyed, emerged as the storm’s iconic image. “We watched the whole place go up in flames,” a survivor said. “It was hell night. It was the devil’s night.” Later — an eerie silence. “I’m feeling scared . . . ” a dislodged Manhattan third-grader said. “New York’s not supposed to be this quiet.”
The high-tide flooding of low-lying southern sections of Manhattan seemed to vindicate one of the most contested images of Al Gore’s 2006 global warming film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Sea waters gushed through Wall Street, making impotent islands of the globe’s most powerful financial institutions. Once again, the fragility of electronic structures on which the world’s economy depends was laid bare — this time by the furies of natural forces that have been abused by that economy. Hurricane Sandy surely scored the high-water mark of climate-change denial.
Comments
This comment has been removed.
When I was young and growing up in Southern California, I would look at the endless mass of cars wending its way along the 405 Freeway, 12 lanes wide, into the sunset. I recall thinking, "My god, there's so many people in the world." With the population of this country now doubling in my lifetime, with Southern California now a concrete urban wasteland, the visions of apocolypse in mass American culture will continue to grow in intensity and force. It's An Inconvenient Truth to lay the blame on natural disasters, but the real truth lies squarely on the shoulders of humanity itself, and its inability to control its own destiny.
This comment has been removed.
This comment has been removed.
This comment has been removed.
This comment has been removed.
Let's see...
The oceans are warmer and warming. Hurricanes feed on warm oceans. Oceans in the northern regions are warming. Sandy followed the warmer ocean to New Jersey and collided with colder air creating more winds and lots of rain and snow. In a few more years, we may see hurricanes in November hitting northern Maine and Nova Scotia and beyond as these area waters continue to warm. We need to know why this is happening.