By Danny Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — The immense impact that weather can have on our civilization has been demonstrated regularly with such events atvolcano eruptions, massive tsunamis and, as of late, hurricanes like Sandy. But as fearsome and awesome as these are, the impacts of globalwarming may be even more devastating. Hollywood ought to make a movie about the phenomenon, while changing the public consciousness can still do some good.
When Sandy spoke, was Hollywood listening?
Stephen Leahy, a climate reporter in Canada, told me in a recent email that he assumed the ”voice” of Sandy and penned a series of “Hurricane Sandy Speaks” opeds that went viral after the storm, with Nick Kristof of the New York Times tweeting a link to his 1.3 million followers.
“Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Climate Connections also picked up my ‘Sandy’ commentaries,” Leahy told San Diego Jewish World. “My last piece was titled ‘I Helped Re-elect President Obama,’ and it makes the point that failure to deal with climate change has consequences here and now as well as in future. And people are beginning to understand that.”
Hurricane Sandy was a combination of a powerful tropical hurricane and a nor’easter, and the New England region sees such storms from time to time.
There was one in 1938 that my Brooklyn-born father told me about.
There was a big New England hurricane in 1955 that made an unforgettable impression on me when I was a kid. In 1988, another monster storm hit the New York region and do not forget Hurricane Katrina which struck New Orleans a few years ago.
However, there is one thing Sandy did that none of the earlier storms did: it cemented in the world’s imagination, and the New York media world’s imagination, via news photographs and blogged videos, surreal images of sea level rises, residential destruction and power outages that speak of things to come if and when global warming does impact the Earth in ways still hard to predict.
After Sandy, there should be no more debate about whether climate change and global warming are happening, only over the details and when climate chaos will hit.
Remember the story of Cassandra? She was a woman from Greek mythology who was blessed with the gift of prophecy, but cursed because herwarnings would always go unheeded and she would be mocked and pilloried. Not a female Jeremiah knd of prophet from the Hebrew Scriptures, but close, Greek-style.
While ancient Greece gave us the tragically relevant tale of Cassandra. people such as Al Gore and James Lovelock have given us new iterations of the same story.
Gore and Lovelock can be called “climate Cassandras” because they are warning of very possible future climate scenarios and yet still have a hard time being taken seriously.
Interpreting scientific atmospheric data and using computer modeling to predict climate trends is as close to trustworthy prophesy as civilization is likely to get.
Sandy washed ashore in Manhattan, but the images broadcast worldwide can help turn the tide of public awareness. After “The Day After Tomorrow,” it’s time for a big Hollywood movie about global warming.
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World and an inveterate web surfer. He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com