The Cup's over, another challenge and climate change ignored, again

This year's America's Cup was
unquestionably spectacular,
but damnably expensive, both in
dollars and in cost to our
environment. 

On the same day the U.S. Government shut down it was announced that Australia’s Hamilton Island Yacht Club would challenge for the America’s Cup.

Unrelated? Yes, but both are about economics.

A dispute between America’s Democrat and Republican parties, that is ultimately ideological, but supposedly about giving the nod to president Obama’s belief in decent medical care for all Americans however, it has the potential to see the country default on its debts.

So as America was labouring under an economic cloud, the Hamilton Island Yacht club led by winemaker, Bob Oatley has successfully made a multi-million dollar challenge for the cup.

The cost of the remarkable yachts at about $10 million each is not the rump of the costs, rather it is the employment, training, maintenance and support of not just the actual crew of the yacht, but the more than 100 people needed to keep the project “afloat”.

In the midst of all this, America is struggling to understand its economy and facing default and just a handful of Americans and Australians are spending millions in what in reality is simply a frivolous pastime.

Does that matter? In the scheme of things probably not, except that it illustrates most people have not yet grasped that climate change is serious and rather than spend billions of dollars on a project that will only worsen the dilemma, it would be better for the world if they chose to spend that money helping us better understand how we can mitigate this worldwide cataclysm.

And while that is happening, many in the world are trying to understand how we can pay for the damage caused by significant weather events, including in America such as super-storm Sandy and the Colorado floods.

USA Today has reported in a story headed: “Report urges extreme weather superfund in wake of Sandy”, that a levy on carbon emissions would fund relief for future disasters.

It said: “Sandy cost the American economy about $70 billion, with more than half of that in New Jersey, where uninsured losses and unmet needs are estimated to between $8 billion and $13 billion in permanent losses – businesses property and public infrastructure costs that cannot be covered by government aid or private insurance.”

Oddly here in Australia, the Abbott led coalition government has just scrapped the colloquially named “carbon tax” ending any likelihood that we would have money in another fund to cover the costs of disruptive weather events.

Julian Cribb, Sandy and 'A gaping wound in democracy'

Julian Cribb.

Julian Cribb has forthrightly said exactly what need to be acknowledged about America’s recent super-storm, “Sandy”.

Cribb, a science communicator and author of ‘The Coming Famine: the global food crisis and what we can do to avoid it’ and who has spoken in the Goulburn Valley, writing on ‘Online Opinion’ argues that an emerging victim of Sandy is democracy and free speech.

Writing in a story headed: “A gaping wound in democracy”, Cribb said many public figures had ignored the real cause of “Sandy”, such events that are coming with increasing fury.

Is this climate change? - Yes!, Yes!

Is the super-storm presently sweeping up the coast of the U.S. the outcome of climate change? – Yes!

Is this climate change? - Yes!

That, I must point out, is a layman’s opinion, but it is a considered opinion and a judgement arrived at after years of reading and listening to many of the world’s leading climatologists.

Climate scientists are by training, vocation and scientific camaraderie naturally sceptics and so are remarkably reluctant to attribute individual events to our injured climate.

The evidence is, however, overwhelming and there comes a time something must be named for what it is – for example when does a drought start and how long must we wait before beginning to actively conserve our water.

Climate Code Red put that question in the story headed: “Climate of doubt as superstorm Sandycrosses US coast”.

 

by Robert Mclean