Hurricane Florence has been over for a week, but its aftereffects are still hammering the Carolinas, making it the perfect storm to showcase what a disaster Republican environmental policy is.
Anthropogenic global warming didn't exactly "cause" the hurricane, but higher air and water temperatures caused by the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from coal-fired power plants and automobiles added fuel to the hurricane's fire, making it much more destructive than it would have been without mankind's influence.
Storms that would have dropped 20 inches of rain in the past now drop 30, because the CO2-warmed atmosphere can hold that much more water. Hurricanes like Florence and Harvey, which hammered Texas last year, now drop upwards of 20 cubic miles of water.
During the storm the "old reliable" nuclear power plant that Republicans are always praising had to shut down. This power plant is similar in design to the ones in Fukushima that got hit by the tsunami and partially melted down, releasing radiation into the ground water and ocean.
On Friday floodwaters breached a dam near a natural-gas fired power plant, forcing it to shut down for lack of cooling water. The floodwaters washed toxic arsenic-laced coal ash out of the basins it was stored in since the power plant was converted from coal years ago, poisoning the river.
North Carolina is home to hundreds of gigantic hog and chicken operations. Many of these were inundated by Florence, resulting in the deaths of 3.4 million chickens and 5,500 hogs, according to preliminary estimates.
Worse still, the lagoons containing toxic pig and chicken manure were flooded and all that raw waste entered the rivers. Of course, there are cities downstream from these coal ash basins and hog manure lagoons that draw their drinking water from the rivers that are now poisoned by all this crap.
Yeah, hurricanes make solar panels and wind turbines shut down. But those energy sources don't need cooling water and don't have toxic waste products that warm the atmosphere (causing more extreme storms), kill millions of fish and poison drinking water supplies.
Florence was not the first hurricane to wreak this kind of destruction. It was basically a repeat of Hurricane Matthew, which hit the area in 2106. Back then millions of farm animals died, and feces and coal ash got into the drinking water, and the houses of people who live too close to the ocean were flooded.
But nothing changed. The people who live in the flood-prone areas of North Carolina rebuilt their houses and farms and businesses -- often with government money -- in exactly the same place, and now those houses have been flooded again.
Why don't they learn? Simple answer: Republicans. North Carolina Republicans actually passed a law in 2012 that demands local governments ignore the reality of climate change and the attendant sea level rise, which make the hurricanes so much more destructive.
This stupidity not only makes our federal taxes go up, it drives up our home owner's insurance. The same companies that pay to rebuild the houses of those idiots who want their barrier island dream houses also insure houses across the country, and we're paying for their idiocy.
It's sad that homes and businesses are destroyed by hurricanes. But the oceans are getting higher because the polar ice caps are melting, and the air and water are warmer, and warm water expands, making these 1,000-year storm surge events happen every couple of years.
The reality is that these homes and businesses can't stay where they are. No amount of Republican magical thinking is going to change the laws of physics.
When are the people who live and work there going to wake up and hold Republicans responsible for lying to them and continuing to push -- to this day -- the very policies that caused them to lose their homes and businesses?
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