‘Harvey’ may change Trump’s mind

A week after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, the devastation continues to be felt with damage estimated at over $108 billion. Over in Houston – the fourth largest city in the United States – Harvey dumped more than 20 trillion gallons of water, enough to supply the requirements of the whole city of New York for more than five decades. The level of rainfall – at 51 inches – was the highest recorded for the Continental US since four decades ago. As of this writing, 48 people have been confirmed dead while an estimated 185,000 homes were either damaged or destroyed. Reports say among the most affected are the 80 percent of Texans with no flood insurance.

Described as one of the costliest storms ever in modern US history, the effects of Harvey will be felt in the years to come, with one million people displaced and projections that the death toll could rise. Although the category 4 hurricane rating for Harvey has since been downgraded to that of a tropical storm, floodwaters have nor receded. According to Texas Governor Greg Abbot, his state will need more than $125 billion in relief funds, with recovery and rehabilitation likely to take years.

Even as a tropical storm, Harvey’s wrath was also felt in Louisiana, with the National Hurricane Center forecasting that life-threatening floods will continue with heavy rains spreading all the way to Kentucky, with flash floods and increased river and small stream flooding as a result.

The damage wrought by Harvey should be enough to make the United States reconsider its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Many also find it rather ominous that a little over a week before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order that removed an Obama-era provision known as the “federal flood risk management standard” that compels federal government agencies to take climate change and rising sea levels into consideration before they approve any building projects.

At the same time, Trump also disbanded a 15-member advisory panel for Sustained National Climate Assessment made up of members of the academe, industry representatives as well as local and federal government officials established in 2015 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  Trump’s actions earned the condemnation of scientists, civil engineers and conservatives who said removing the flood and climate change provisions is irresponsible as it is tantamount to pouring taxpayer money into projects that would only be “washed away by flooding.”

Ironically, Louisiana representative Ralph Abraham (Republican) who resisted the Obama regulation saying it would drive construction costs up his state, applauded Trump’s decision, saying the flooding experienced by the State of Louisiana in 2016 was an “isolated event.” As it turns out, Louisiana was hit by widespread flooding, with continuing tropical downpours that could make cleanup and recovery efforts difficult.

Information gathered show politics could hinder recovery efforts as fights over funding could ensue with politicians debating where to source the funds and which items to cut from the budget to finance recovery requirements. This happened in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with then-Republican Congressman from Indiana Mike Pence – now the vice president – saying, “We simply can’t allow a catastrophe of nature to become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren.”

Harvey has also sent gas prices soaring, with 4.4 million barrels of daily refining capacity knocked out as the United States’ biggest refiners – the biggest of which is Port Arthur that handles 600,000 barrels of crude per day – remain on shutdown and will continue to be closed for at least two weeks.

Anyone who still doubts the reality of climate change as a global threat only has to look at the record-breaking rainfall dumped by Hurricane Harvey over Texas. Scientists have predicted that extreme weather events, including the so-called “once-in-a-century hurricane,” will become common occurrences as the earth continues to get warmer. Climate change advocates also say that Houston – which fancies itself as the “world capital of the oil and gas industry” – suffered the most devastation because it was made even more vulnerable by its lack of a zoning code, aggravated by the unprecedented urban sprawl that had scientists warning that the city was a disaster waiting to happen.

But nothing could compare with the devastation wreaked by Typhoon Yolanda that killed 6,300 people (according to official records) and displaced millions more. More than three years after its onslaught, many are still reeling from the effects of the super typhoon, with rehabilitation efforts still being conducted in many areas in Eastern Visayas. To this end, President Duterte has created a task force to speed up rehabilitation, pointing to the uncoordinated efforts that have caused delay upon delay in the last three years.

In Tacloban which has been dubbed as “ground zero,” a disaster preparedness center will be built to remind people of the devastation by Yolanda and at the same time equip people with the knowledge on how to deal with natural calamities and disasters. My friend Loren Legarda was named by the UN as the “Global Champion for Resilience” because of her untiring advocacy for disaster risk reduction and rightly so. She initially donated P50 million as funding for the four-story building that is expected for completion in six months.

Just recently, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” – the follow up to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” – premiered in the Philippines. It’s a stark reminder that while nature has its own ways of warning people to change their ways – it should also encourage everyone to fight the consequences of climate change in their own individual ways.

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