The Real Terror: 6,408 Deaths Caused By Extreme Weather Since 9/11

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http://www.alternet.org/real-terror-6408-deaths-caused-extreme-weather-911


MTA Police supervise as the last people are cleared out of Grand Central Station in New York on October 28, 2012. Commuter rail and subway services have been shut down in preparation for Hurricane Sandy.

***SNIP


As I write this parts of Manhattan are still dark. Crews are still searching for missing family members on Staten Island. The final death toll has not been tallied. The victims not yet buried.

We’ve been shortsighted. We’ve marginalized those who warned us. We’ve treated environmentalism as an irksome fad. We’ve given cadence to nontroversies and called it balance. We’ve spent trillions to protect ourselves against terrorists and done nothing to keep our biggest cities above water in a storm.

“One of the very important national security threats we face is climate change.” Said Senator Barbara Boxer in a 2007 cable interview. In the 2010 mid-terms , her opponent sacked Hewlett-Packard CEO, Carly Fiorina, made it into a campaign commercial and said: “Terrorism kills and Barbara Boxer is worried about the weather.”

Yes, the weather. This frivolous weather thing the hippies keep harping about just devastated the biggest, most densely populated, city in the country. The city that never sleeps shut down completely. The structural damage and loss in revenue are unprecedented. Even before Sandy, our weather-related fatalities far exceed the Americans who’ve died from terrorist attacks. Since September 11, 2001 there have been roughly 30 Americans killed by terrorism (depending on how you do the numbers). Extreme weather deaths in the same time period have totaled 6,408 as of 2011 according to the National Weather Service .