“It’s catastrophic, unprecedented, epic,” said Patrick Blood, a National Weather Service meteorologist. “Whatever adjective you want to use.”
Brock Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, went even further: “This is a storm the United States has not seen yet.”
What they’re talking about, whether they know it or not, or care to acknowledge it or not, is global warming. The planet is getting warmer, ocean temperatures are rising, the polar ice caps are melting, and all of the incontrovertible science of climate change is that more extreme-weather events are an inevitable consequence.
Tom Friedman in his new book calls climate change a “black elephant” — a combination of the unforeseen “black swan” event with enormous consequences and the “elephant in the room” no one can see.
There’s really no other way to make sense of what’s happening in Houston. The black elephant is here in America, just as it’s in Africa and the Middle East and Antarctica, whether we want to see it or not.
- Vernon Loeb is managing editor of the Houston Chronicle.
