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href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/29/hurricane-harvey-manmade-climate-disaster-world-catastrophe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/29/hurricane-harvey-manmade-climate-disaster-world-catastrophe?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Why are the crucial questions about
Hurricane Harvey not being asked? <br>
</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">George Monbiot - August
29, 2017<br>
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<p><span class="drop-cap"><span class="drop-cap__inner">I</span></span>t
is not only Donald Trump’s government that <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/07/usda-climate-change-language-censorship-emails"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">censors the discussion of climate
change</a>; it is the entire body of polite opinion.
This is why, though the links are clear and obvious,
most reports on <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/hurricane-harvey"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">Hurricane Harvey</a> have made no
mention of the human contribution to it.</p>
<p>In 2016 the US elected a president who believes that
human-driven <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/14/donald-trump-climate-change-mentions-government-websites"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">global warming is a hoax</a>. It
was the <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/jul/11/we-just-broke-the-record-for-hottest-year-9-straight-times"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">hottest year on record</a>, in
which the US was hammered <a
href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/12/26/fire-and-rain-california-drought-eased-but-not-over/"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">by a series</a> of climate-related
disasters. Yet the total combined coverage for the
entire year on the evening and Sunday news programmes on
ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News <a
href="https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/03/23/how-broadcast-networks-covered-climate-change-2016/215718"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">amounted to 50 minutes</a>. Our
greatest predicament, the issue that will define our
lives, has been blotted from the public’s mind.</p>
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data-link-name="rich-link-2 | 1">
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<p>This is not an accident. But nor (with the exception of
Fox News) is it likely to be a matter of policy. It
reflects a deeply ingrained and scarcely conscious
self-censorship. Reporters and editors ignore the
subject because they have an instinct for avoiding
trouble. To talk about <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/sep/27/ipcc-climate-change-report-global-warming"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">climate breakdown</a> (which in my
view is a better term than the curiously bland labels we
attach to this crisis) is to question not only Trump,
not only current environmental policy, not only current
economic policy – but the entire political and economic
system.</p>
<p>It is to expose a programme that relies on robbing the
future to fuel the present, that demands perpetual
growth on a finite planet. It is to challenge the very
basis of capitalism; to inform us that our lives are
dominated by a system that cannot be sustained – a
system that is destined, if it is not replaced, to
destroy everything.</p>
<p>To claim there is no link between climate breakdown and
the severity of <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/hurricane-harvey"
data-link-name="auto-linked-tag"
data-component="auto-linked-tag" class="u-underline">Hurricane
Harvey</a> is like claiming there is no link between
the warm summer we have experienced and the end of the
last ice age. Every aspect of our weather is affected by
the fact that global temperatures rose by about 4C
between the ice age and the 19th century. And every
aspect of our weather is affected by the 1C of global
warming caused by human activities. While no weather
event can be blamed solely on human-driven warming, none
is unaffected by it.</p>
<p>We know that the severity and impact of hurricanes on
coastal cities is exacerbated by <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-more-deadly"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">at least two factors</a>: higher
sea levels, caused primarily by the thermal expansion of
seawater; and greater storm intensity, caused by higher
sea temperatures and the ability of warm air to hold
more water than cold air.</p>
<p>Before it reached the Gulf of Mexico, Harvey had been
demoted from a tropical storm to a tropical wave. But as
it reached the Gulf, where temperatures this month have
been <a href="http://www.climatesignals.org/node/7158"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">far above average</a>, it was
upgraded first to a tropical depression, then to <a
href="http://time.com/4917127/hurricane-harvey-timeline/"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">a category one hurricane</a>. It
might have been expected to weaken as it approached the
coast, as hurricanes churn the sea, bringing cooler
waters to the surface. But the water it brought up from
100 metres and more <a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/did-climate-change-intensify-hurricane-harvey/538158/"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">was also unusually warm</a>. By
the time it reached land, Harvey had intensified to a <a
href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php" title=""
data-link-name="in body link" class="u-underline">category
four hurricane</a>.</p>
<p>We were warned about this. In June, for instance,
Robert Kopp, a professor of Earth sciences, <a
href="https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/06/29/climate-change-damage-us-economy-increase-inequality"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">predicted</a>: “In the absence of
major efforts to reduce emissions and strengthen
resilience, the Gulf Coast will take a massive hit. Its
exposure to sea-level rise – made worse by potentially
stronger hurricanes – poses a major risk to its
communities.”</p>
<p>To raise this issue, I’ve been told <a
href="https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/902117703292420096"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">on social media</a>, is to
politicise Hurricane Harvey. It is an insult to the
victims and a distraction from their urgent need. The
proper time to discuss it is when people have rebuilt
their homes, and scientists have been able to conduct an
analysis of just how great the contribution from climate
breakdown might have been. In other words, talk about it
only when it’s out of the news. When researchers
determined, nine years on, that human activity had made
<a
href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-1011-1"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">a significant contribution to
Hurricane Katrina</a>, the information scarcely
registered.</p>
<p>I believe it is the silence that’s political. To report
the storm as if it were an entirely natural phenomenon,
like last week’s eclipse of the sun, is to take a
position. By failing to make the obvious link and talk
about climate breakdown, media organisations ensure our
greatest challenge goes unanswered. They help push the
world towards catastrophe.</p>
<p>Hurricane Harvey offers a glimpse of a likely global
future; a future whose average temperatures are as
different from ours as ours are from those of the last
ice age. It is a future in which emergency becomes
the norm, and no state has the capacity to respond. It
is a future in which, as <a
href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6cb3"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">a paper in the journal
Environmental Research Letters notes</a>, disasters
like Houston’s occur in some cities several times a
year. It is a future that, for people in countries such
as Bangladesh, has already arrived, almost unremarked on
by the rich world’s media. It is the act of not talking
that makes this nightmare likely to materialise.</p>
<p>In Texas, the connection could scarcely be more
apparent. The storm ripped through the oil fields, <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-idUSKCN1B802D?il=0"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">forcing rigs and refineries to
shut down</a>, including those owned by some of the 25
companies that have produced <a
href="https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">more than half the greenhouse gas
emissions</a> humans have released since the start of
the Industrial Revolution. Hurricane Harvey has
devastated a place in which climate breakdown is
generated, and in which the policies that prevent it
from being addressed are formulated.</p>
<p>Like Trump, who denies human-driven global warming but
who wants to build <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/17/donald-trump-ireland-golf-resort-wall-climate-change"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">a wall around his golf resort</a>
in Ireland to protect it from the rising seas, these
companies, some of which have <a
href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/index.php"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">spent millions sponsoring climate
deniers</a>, have progressively raised the height of
their platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, in response to
warnings about higher seas and stronger storms. <a
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/harvey-offshore-platform-oil-gas/537960/"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">They have grown</a> from 40ft
above sea level in 1940, to 70ft in the 1990s, to 91ft
today.</p>
<p>This is not, however, a story of mortal justice. In
Houston, as everywhere else, it is generally the poorer
communities, least responsible for the problem, who are
hit first and hit worst. But the connection between
cause and effect should appeal to even the slowest
minds.</p>
<p>The problem is not confined to the US. Across the
world, the issue that hangs over every aspect of our
lives <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/climate-crisis-media-relegates-greatest-challenge-hurtle-us-collapse-planet"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">is marginalised</a>, except on the
rare occasions where world leaders gather to discuss it
in sombre tones (then sombrely agree to do almost
nothing), whereupon the instinct to follow the
machinations of power overrides the instinct to avoid a
troubling subject. When they do cover the issue, they
tend to mangle it.</p>
<p>In the UK, the BBC this month again invited the
climate-change denier <a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40899188"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">Nigel Lawson on to the Today
programme</a>, in the mistaken belief that
impartiality requires a balance between correct facts
and false ones. The broadcaster seldom makes such a mess
of other topics, because it takes them more seriously.</p>
<p>When Trump’s enforcers instruct officials and
scientists to <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/14/donald-trump-climate-change-mentions-government-websites"
title="" data-link-name="in body link"
class="u-underline">purge any mention of climate
change from their publications</a>, we are
scandalised. But when the media does it, without the
need for a memo, we let it pass. This censorship is
invisible even to the perpetrators, woven into the
fabric of organisations that are
constitutionally destined to leave the major questions
of our times unasked. To acknowledge this issue is
to challenge everything. To challenge everything is to
become an outcast.</p>
<p><span class="bullet">•</span> George Monbiot is a
Guardian columnist</p>
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