Storm of the century is an annual event

By now, about everyone has seen pictures of Houston and eastern Texas under water. The flood will recede, slowly, and when it does there’s a city and several counties to rebuild, so rebuilt they shall be. This time.

The almost annual submergence somewhere, of land never submerged before gives news folk something to cover in the dog days of August. Human suffering and resilience mixed with tragedy and heroism span the cable networks wider than the muddy waters of the Brazos, flowing miles from its familiar banks.

News conveyors seek and occasionally find new descriptors for stagnant fens where days ago children played. Missing from the script this time around are the words, “Once in a century.” They are gone because now we know they are wrong. The storm of the century comes every year.

It’s early days, so neither anxious reporters nor sombre public officials suggest that this “weather event” – singular, with a defined beginning and end – is connected to the damage carbon has inflicted on the earth’s atmosphere. The biggest, richest carbon purveyor on the planet is headquartered in Dallas, just 245 miles northwest, up Highway 45.

Water claiming American soil demands round-the-clock coverage. When floods hit India, Nepal, China, Africa, or Britain, as they do with alarming regularity, there is room for a clip and a voice over. The song’s the same, the volume is turned down. Canadian floods are purely Canadian news.

Ah, but it’s been a grand summer in Atlantic Canada. Warmer than many remember. Wonderful for tourists flocking to the cool ocean breezes to escape inland heat.

There’s a map, once and perhaps still in the possession of the Ecology Action Centre. It’s an unrecognized spit of land and islands, somehow eerily familiar. It’s Nova Scotia, or what’s left of her if the earth’s temperature surpasses the two-degrees Celsius considered the point of no return from climate-induced cataclysm.

Once oriented, the map shows the Minas Basin swallowing Truro and stretching nearly to Pictou County. The Valley is an arm of the bigger Bay, the Bras d’Or Lake divides the Cape Breton Islands, the City of Lakes is one big one and Halifax’s shoreline is pushed back to suburban heights. The Gulf of St. Lawrence laps Wentworth mountains, unimpeded by the sand spit that was Canada’s smallest province.

Those are some highlights. Al Gore’s new movie, 10 years after he tried to get the masses to accept an Inconvenient Truth, speaks Truth to Power, a hint of hope replacing the apocalyptic forecast of the original. Renewable energy, the primary source in most of Europe, the Paris Climate Agreement, and the global effort to lower carbon emissions have humanity at the corner. Whether we navigate the turn will pretty much decide the planet’s future.

Even as east Texas shows signs of becoming part of the Gulf of Mexico, American leadership has stepped back from the brink of unfamiliar sanity, to the greater comfort of denial. The Trump administration is making good on its promise to offer the coal miners of West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee jobs and shorter lives.

As candidate, Trump claimed climate change was a Chinese hoax. A full two-thirds of Republicans in Congress aren’t convinced it’s a real thing. America is all but out of the Paris deal and the world’s biggest economy is stoking the oil and coal burners like the good ol’ days. It’s Making America Great, Again.

While one per cent of the world’s scientists remain wellcompensated holdouts, the other 99 per cent are convinced the floodwaters will continue to rise, and permanently without drastic action to curb carbon emissions.

Here in Nova Scotia the politicians say we’ve done our part, and got Ottawa to exempt us from more aggressive carbon reduction targets. We’re small, insignificant really, so a Liberal provincial government is granted immunity, a claim to power rate stability and a pass on global responsibility.

Economic considerations are urgent. An uninhabitable home is tomorrow’s problem.