“We will not join the others in the denial, in the pretend, in the ‘let business happen as usual,’ because our kids and our grand kids mean more to us than our own greed. And we’re going to get off oil and move forward as quickly as we know how.”

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin got the crowd fired up at 350.org’s “Moving Planet” event at the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier last week.   Shumlin spoke about the recent impacts of global climate change on Vermont, how Vermont has taken a leadership role in doing something about it, and how the state can do even more to overcome this challenge in the future:

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin at 350.org’s “Moving Planet” event from Ben B on Vimeo.

Vermont was devastated by the 1-in-100 year deluge from Hurricane Irene:

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by Bill Becker

The term “perfect storm” is overused now, but it is the perfect metaphor for the violent relationship between people and the environment today.  We are experiencing a  convergence of factors that are putting us at great risk. For example:

• Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe.

• The big public works projects we built to protect us from natural disasters over the past century may no longer be affordable or the best option.

• The idea that we can bulldozer natural systems into submission and live wherever we wish has put millions of Americans in harms way.

• Weather-related disasters are becoming a clear and present danger to security at home and abroad.

• Our national leaders generally seem oblivious to this mounting danger, or in denial that it is real, allowing politics and flat-earth ideology to prevail over common sense.

• Even if our politicians were willing to unify around a national response to extreme weather, budget problems have greatly diminished governments’ capacity to act.

In this three-part post, I’ll weave together data from a variety of sources and experts to explore whether we are ready to live in nature’s new norm.

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Last week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) shockingly demanded that Congress should not approve emergency aid to states battered by Hurricane Irene unless it makes offsetting budget cuts elsewhere first. Several other congressional Republicans have made the same demand since then.

Now, Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) has joined this chorus of disaster aid hostage takers. Hayworth, who represents a portion of New York that the hurricane hit, said Congress has to have budget cuts before it allocates more disaster aid because the “challenges we face with the national budget have not changed,” and likened it to a family skipping a vacation:

Only days after a record-setting storm destroyed her district, Rep. Nan Hayworth and her House colleagues threatened to withhold disaster money if lawmakers don’t cut additional spending from the federal budget. “We’re facing a natural disaster in the middle of an economic disaster,” Hayworth said Wednesday. “Certainly, the challenges we face with the national budget have not changed.”

Hayworth, R-Mount Kisco, said she would only vote to replenish the federal disaster fund if new spending was offset by budget cuts. She said those cuts should come from “non-defense discretionary spending.” Hayworth likened her position to a family skipping vacation if it was overwhelmed by bills. “We have to control spending,” she said. “There’s no question about it.”

Hayworth represents a number of cities, including Yorktown, that were battered by Irene. Thousands of her constituents were left without power and there was widespread flooding and damage to water systems, as some towns are now warning their residents to boil their water before consumption. Orange County alone said it received three times as many emergency phone calls as during a major snowstorm in February 2010, and 36,000 people were left without access to electricity. A resident of the town of Monroe in Orange County posted a YouTube video of the streets outside, where natural waterfalls had formed from flooding and cars were stuck in water:

Both Govs. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Chris Christie (R-NJ) have called on their fellow Republicans to immediately deliver disaster aid and put aside hostage taking about complimentary budget cuts.

Vermont Governor:  “We’ve got to get off fossil fuels as quickly as we know how, to make this planet livable for our children and our grandchildren.”

Below the jump is a guest post, “Surviving My Own Predictions: A Vermont Climate Scientist Faces Hurricane Irene.”

A house in Sharon, Vermont, that started out the week on the other side of this underpass, via Masters.

The storm of the century — at least for large parts of New England — is over.  But Irene’s 1-in-100 year deluge leaves devastation in its wake.   Meteorologist and former hurricane Hunter Dr. Jeff Masters summed it up this way yesterday:

Record flooding continues in the Northeast from Irene’s torrential rains. Hardest hit was Vermont, where heavy rains in the weeks prior to Irene’s arrival had left soils in the top 20% for moisture, historically. Irene dumped 5 – 8 inches of rain over large sections of Vermont, with a peak of 11.23″ at Mendo. The reading from Mendo was the greatest single-day rainfall in Vermont’s history…. beating the 9.92″ that fell at Mt. Mansfield on 9/17/1999 during the passage of Tropical Storm Floyd.

Governor Peter Shumlin (D-VT) spoke Tuesday about the danger human-caused climate change poses to his state and others:

I find it extraordinary that so many political leaders won’t actually talk about the relationship between climate change, fossil fuels, our continuing irrational exuberance about burning fossil fuels, in light of these storm patterns that we’ve been experiencing.

We had storms this spring that flooded our downtowns and put us through many of the same exercises that we’re going through right now. We didn’t used to get weather patterns like this in Vermont….

We in the colder states are going to see the results of climate change first…  Myself, Premier [Jean] Charest up in Quebec, Governor [Andrew] Cuomo over in New York, we understand that the flooding and the extraordinary weather patterns that we’re seeing are a result of our burnings of fossil fuel. We’ve got to get off fossil fuels as quickly as we know how, to make this planet livable for our children and our grandchildren.

What follows is a guest post by Dr. Elizabeth R. Sawin of Hartland, Vermont.  Sawin is Co-Director of Climate Interactive, a non-profit organization that creates computer simulations of climate and energy policy in the U.S. and around the world – ClimateInteractive.org.

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While the the damage Hurricane Irene left in its wake is still being talled, it is already projected to be one of the top 10 costliest disasters in U.S. history. Estimates put the cost at $7 billion to $10 billion after the storm knocked out power, destroyed crops, and flooded towns throughout the East Coast.

But the cost of the Texas drought, which climate change pushed to extremes, may be greater economic disaster. Earlier this month, Texas Agrilife Extension Service estimated losses to be at $5.2 billion — already greater than the $4.1 billion of losses from the 2006 drought. “This drought is just strangling our agricultural economy,” professor Travis Miller, of Texas A&M University’s Department of Soil and Crop Sciences. Losses, told TIME Magazine.

The extended heat wave that has exacerbated the drought is expected to break soon, but without rain, farmers will have no relief before planting winter wheat in September or October. Texas produces one-third of winter wheat in the U.S., so analysts expect price increases if there is not enough rain for the wheat crop. Already from the summer, Texas, which produces 55 percent of U.S. cotton, has lost half its cotton crop. And scant summer rain has led to a scarce hay crop, so some ranchers are selling off cattle herds because they can’t afford to continue providing feed and water. The short-term price in beef may drop, but the long-term implications of losing entire herds will push up the price soon enough.

And the outlook for rain could remain bleak for Texas and states across the southern Plains that could use some of the deluge Irene dumped on the northeast:

Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico have been caught in a heat wave that feeds on the drought, according to Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon. As sunlight hits the ground, Nielsen-Gammon says, it evaporates any moisture in the soil and raises the temperature of the soil. With no moisture, the ground is a virtual hot plate, adding to the misery. [...]

So far this year, [Texas] has recorded about 7.5 in. of rain, Nielsen-Gammon says. “That’s 40% of our normal rainfall. The previous drought was 69% of normal.” He gives the state a 50% chance of lower-than-normal precipitation this winter. If the La Niña effect — cool water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific waters — kicks in later this year, those odds get tougher and go to 75% or 80% for a dry winter, Nielsen-Gammon says.

As the greenhouse gas-fueled weather, from fiercer droughts to stronger hurricanes, continues to create more extreme weather, the U.S. will continue having to tally the high economic costs from the damage caused by these natural disasters.