The metropolitan area of Houston contains 6.5 million people over urban sprawl the size of New Jersey. Zoning regulations allowed for unregulated growth, even in areas prone to flooding, creating a large population on a flood plain. The area has had a long relationship with the petrochemical industry which has been able to get its way, but being business friendly to the industry is going to become very costly. The city is sinking at 2.2 inches a year in large part because of oil and water being pumped from under it.
The failure to act on climate for the last three decades also means that government will spend more as each crisis has multi-hundred million or even multi-billion dollar costs. In addition, people today are leaving a bill of hundreds of trillions of dollars to future generations. It would be much less expensive if government acted responsibly and put in place infrastructure and technology to adapt to climate change as well as to ameliorate it now. The disaster in Houston is an opportunity to make those changes.
The historic failure of government action on climate change shows a fatal flaw in a representative democracy that is based on the corruption of big business money and serves the corporate interests who profit from the flawed status quo.
People Rise to the Challenge
Throughout much of this history, particularly in the 21st Century, people have been challenging the dominance of the oil, gas and coal industries and pushing government to confront climate change.
Even before Trump came into office, there were massive protests during the Obama administration against the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline and other carbon infrastructure throughout the country.
People protested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which is an arm of the oil and gas industry disguised as a federal agency. Obama's FERC commissioners were a rubber stamp for the industry, now, Trump's FERC continues the practice.
People were escalating actions during the Obama era saying the time for direct action on climate change is now. Protests were on an upswing before Trump was elected. Last September, Bill McKibben recalculated the climate math showing how time was running out.
From the first day of the Trump administration people were taking action. Climate activists blockaded Trump's inauguration making it more difficult for people to attend. In addition to protests against specific carbon energy products, people mobilized for #DayAgainstDenial Protests across U.S. to call attention to climate change.
People pushed businesses and local governments to pledge to reduce carbon emissions resulting in over 1,400 U.S. cities, states and businesses vowing to meet Paris climate commitments. Last week, nine eastern states jointly agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent more than their previous target.
There is widespread climate change action, which is "unstoppable" despite Trump's policies. In fact, Trump's presidency may be leading to an escalation in movement action as people know we can no longer hope to win by simply voting or speaking out. People are showing they are willing to risk going to jail for a livable future. And, we have begun to see cases where juries are not willing to convict people for climate change protests.
Climate change affects each of us and is an issue that unites us. When crisis hits, we need to act as a community in mutual aid of each other. Those community relationships can be built now so we are ready in times of crisis.
The only way we can mitigate and adapt to climate breakdown is by working together toward the common goals of reducing our carbon footprint, moving to a net zero carbon energy economy as soon as possible and putting in place the infrastructure needed to adapt to the climate crisis.
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