written 6 October, 2024
published 13 October, 2024
Recently, Helene came ashore as a category 4 hurricane, 600 miles in diameter. A tropical depression just a few days earlier, the very hot water in the Gulf of Mexico rapidly amplified the storm, and increased the amount of water it carried.
Helene made landfall in the Big Bend section of Florida, the third, and strongest, hurricane to hit there in just 13 months, producing a 15 foot storm surge, the largest ever recorded in that area. Moving quickly inland, Helene dropping torrents of rain, before dissipating hundreds of miles north. The hardest hit parts of North Carolina had already experienced days of rain before Helene arrived, and some areas received as much as 24 inches, causing epic flooding and destruction.
Another tropical depression has formed in the Gulf of Mexico, and will reach Florida before this article is printed, possibly as a category 3 hurricane.
The Project 2025 authoritarian plan for the United States claimed in the climate section that "climate change is overstated, and will be mild and manageable." The reality now being dealt with in the southeast is neither mild, nor manageable. Insured costs and infrastructure repair expenses are estimated at over $150B, and will take years to accomplish. This doesn't include uninsured losses, or business income lost during recovery. When your home and place of work have been destroyed, getting back to "normal" can take time. Some of the people in Florida haven't recovered from the previous two hurricanes, and may not ever rebuild there. Home insurance in Florida is already four times more expensive than California, and the industry may not survive the current impacts.
The climate we experience today is the result of more than a century of changing atmospheric chemistry, resulting from human energy production, trapping more heat, which is then distributed in more extreme weather events. Storms are becoming more numerous, stronger, larger, and carry more rain. No place on Earth is immune.
For those willing to actually look at the issue, the challenge is stark: stop adding to the problem (economic decarbonization), and begin removing what has already been done (carbon sequestration). For those addicted to the money of the status quo, and willing to ignore the reality of the ongoing impact, this is intolerable. We saw that at the Vice-Presidential debate, a few days after the Helene devastation. When asked about the climate crisis, Vance faithfully parroted the party line. Republicans are committed to "clean air and water" (without mentioning greenhouse gases), and the solution is "Drill Baby Drill".
Without even considering the climate crisis, our current energy solution is foolish, leading to economic bankruptcy and societal collapse. Classic fiscal advice is to conserve your savings, and live on the income. The cautionary tale is the person who rapidly spends their inheritance, and then dies broke. Humanity inherited a vast supply of stored solar energy in the form of fossil fuels, laid down over tens of millions of years. In just two centuries, we have burned through about half of that inheritance. These have been the most accessible reserves, which produced the cheapest power. As we continue to deplete our finite energy savings, all future fossil fuels will become increasingly more expensive. This same limitation is inherent in nuclear fission, which also consumes rare, finite material.
The alternative is learning to live within our income. We can now efficiently harvest our daily energy income, collecting it as solar, wind, or hydro power (collectively called renewables), and efficiently store this energy until needed. Unlike all energy produced by combustion, this energy is free, needing only the hardware to collect it, which is a fixed cost. Furthermore, the collection/storage hardware can be produced in a range of sizes, from vast systems to those scaled for a single dwelling. This helps free us from the constraint of centralization, which requires huge capital investments and massive distribution systems. Such energy systems are useful all over the planet, and the increasing scale of manufacturing keeps reducing the costs every year.
Tapping another free energy source, the emerging technology of closed loop geothermal power collects the internal heat of the planet. It can be located almost anywhere, with a modest physical footprint.
Learning to live within our energy income is sustainable well into the future. The existing energy system is getting more expensive, and produces unintended consequences that are killing our society. Are we wise enough to change?
