Thanks to New york City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the issue of global warming may finally be getting some much-needed attention. Better late than never, as they say…
Bloomberg Businessweek’s cover story this week takes a direct approach to linking Hurricane Sandy and climate change.
As the storm approached the East Coast on Monday, many media outlets considered the link between the hurricane and climate change vital to its coverage. While the connection was broached on social media sites like Twitter, the discussion did not get noticeable attention on cable new networks that were continuously covering the storm.
Bloomberg Businessweek, however, made the connection loud and clear with its cover story. Above a photo of a flooded, powerless city street, the headline “IT’S GLOBAL WARMING, STUPID” appears in bold, underlined text.
Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel tweeted, “Our cover story this week may generate controversy, but only among the stupid.”
As large parts of New York City remain in a power blackout, local bars and stores are offering up their generators to help people stay connected. Here are some scenes.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the teeming streets of lower Manhattan have become an eerie, empty wasteland. Amidst the cold and the dark, the most pressing need is not for food or water — but for power to charge phones and laptops.
Fortunately, New Yorkers are looking out for each other as they always do. Outside bars and bodegas, merchants with generators are sharing them with residents who need to charge up and contact the outside world. This was the scene near Avenue A in the East Village where Percy’s Tavern set up tables with dozens of power outlets to use free of charge:
Similar scenes played out in front of hairdressers and coffee shops around the blacked out part of the city. Strangely, for this week at least, the cell phone habits of many New Yorkers resemble those of rural Africans who regularly pay small sums to charge their mobile devices from a generator.
The situation in Manhattan also highlights how, in a crisis, the city’s post-industrial economy still ultimately depends on very industrial fuels like diesel. (To see how we might one day progress beyond this, see the excellent reporting by Katie Fehrenbacher earlier this week.)
Similar scenes played out in front of hairdressers and coffee shops around the blacked out part of the city. Strangely, for this week at least, the cell phone habits of many New Yorkers resemble those of rural Africans who regularly pay small sums to charge their mobile devices from a generator.
The situation in Manhattan also highlights how, in a crisis, the city’s post-industrial economy still ultimately depends on very industrial fuels like diesel. (To see how we might one day progress beyond this, see the excellent reporting by Katie Fehrenbacher earlier this week.)
I’m very proud of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie who I have had a few issues with in the last few months. I admire his dedication to his job and the way he’s put politics on the back burner.
Of course I’m generally proud of President Obama’s actions during times of crisis in our country. Both men have shown their leadership capabilities and dedication to the job they were elected to do.
President Barack Obama was in New Jersey surveying its battered coastline on Wednesday, as the state and 15 others dealt with cleanup and power outages two days after Superstorm Sandy tore through.
Obama boarded a helicopter for an aerial survey with N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican and vocal backer of presidential challenger Mitt Romney who nevertheless has praised Obama and the federal response to the storm.
Christie earlier said he would ask the president to task the Army Corps of Engineers with how “to rebuild the beach to protect these towns.”
But, he added, “it won’t be the same because some of the iconic things are washed into the ocean.”
Christie on Wednesday ordered that Halloween trick-or-treating be moved to Monday due to unsafe conditions. Aerial footage of the coastline Wednesday morning showed mile after mile of destruction: a neighborhood on fire, others swamped by sand and evacuations still happening in places with high water.
Recovery operations on Wednesday got a boost from the Navy, which ordered three helicopter carrier ships to the New Jersey and New York coasts, officials told NBC News.
The USS Wasp, USS Carter Hall, and USS Mesa Verde will provide landing platforms for Coast Guard, National Guard and civilian agency helicopters if needed, the officials said, adding that the Atlantic Fleet command made the decision in the name of “prudent planning.”
Wall Street reopened Wednesday, as did some airports, but 6 million homes and businesses — two thirds in New Jersey and New York — were without power Wednesday morning.
FEMA Director Craig Fugate had a blunt response on Wednesday to his Bush-era predecessor who criticized President Barack Obama’s early preparation for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
“It’s better to be fast than to be late,” Fugate said on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”
Michael Brown, who ran the agency during Hurricane Katrina, told POLITICO Tuesday that he stood by his criticism that Obama moved too quickly federal relief and response to Sandy.
“In the context of the election, I simply said he should have waited,” Brown said. “The storm was still forming, people were debating whether it was going to be as bad as expected, or not, and I noted that the president should have let the governors and mayors deal with the storm until it got closer to hitting the coastal areas along the Washington, D.C.-New York City corridor.”
As the East Coast and parts of Ohio struggled to regroup in the devastating wake of “Superstorm” Sandy, the Romney campaign hastily transformed a scheduled victory rally in Dayton, Ohio into a non-political “storm relief event” on Tuesday. According to BuzzFeed, the campaign encouraged supporters to bring hurricane relief supplies and “deliver the bags of canned goods, packages of diapers, and cases of water bottles to the candidate, who would be perched behind a table along with a slew of volunteers and his Ohio right-hand man, Senator Rob Portman.”
Just to be safe, campaign aides reportedly spent $5,000 at a local Wal-Mart on supplies that could be put on display. When supporters arrived at the rally-turned-relief event, they were treated to the 10-minute video about Romney’s life, which was first unveiled at the RNC. The event ended with supporters lined up to hand over supplies and meet Romney. But according to BuzzFeed, this donation process was also staged:
Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, “What if we dropped off our donations up front?”
The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. “Just grab something,” he said.
Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their “donations” to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest “Thank you.”
The Red Cross, meanwhile, said they were grateful for the supplies but encouraged people to donate money or blood as a more efficient way to help the relief effort.
This post’s title-quote was written by Mira of The Democratic Underground. It was in reference to the above picture of President Obama walking in the rain. She goes on to say:
After cancelling his appearance at a morning campaign rally in Orlando, Fla., President Barack Obama walks toward the White House in a driving rain Monday. Obama returned to Washington to monitor preparations for early response to Hurricane Sandy on Monday.
When I take a look at this, and think of the hours, the energy and care extended and the grueling work all the way around, it makes me humble and grateful to our President for his dedication to his obligations to the country and to us.
This photo shows that it is not at all easy, if you take it seriously, no matter how fancy being the President can look at times. Just sayin’.
He quoted Abe, “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.”
Or at least he para-quoted part of it, and I completely believe him.
TFC readers, what are your thoughts on the above photo?
During the GOP debates, Mitt Romney said he’d like to gut FEMA and privatize disaster relief. That plan might not sit so well with voters as Hurricane Sandy barrels through the Northeast.
Me and my eldest son were talking about this just this morning…
Hurricane Sandy, which is barreling towards America’s East Coast, is epic in scale—according to the National Weather Service, the storm reaches from Florida to Connecticut. But public safety problems from flooding, power outages, and property damage aren’t the only way the massive storm could affect your life: If Sandy turns out to be as bad as the meteorologists fear, it could have a real impact on the 2012 presidential election.
Political scientists have found that extreme weather affects how voters evaluate presidents and governors, and botching disaster response can dash incumbents’ reelection hopes. Andrew Reeves and John T. Gasper, political science professors at Boston University and Carnegie Mellon University, respectively, found that voters punish leaders for failing to react adequately to natural disasters—and reward those who respond effectively.
“Voters did in fact punish both governors and presidents for damage caused by natural disasters, but that that effect was really swamped by their response,” Reeves says. “[Voters] rewarded when governors [asked for] and presidents [gave] help, and they punished when they didn’t.”
It may seem bizarre that something like the weather would affect who lives in the White House come January. But freak events like Sandy aren’t the only kind of weather that affects voters’ decisions. There’s evidence voters even punish incumbents for harsh weather over the course of an election year, despite it being by definition out of politicians’ control.
“The pretty strong pattern turns out to be that all other things being equal, the incumbent party does less well when it’s too wet or too dry,” says Larry Bartels, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. In 2004, Bartels and his then-colleague Christopher H. Achen, who’s now a professor at Princeton, authored a study on the impact of climate on elections. According to their study, Al Gore lost an estimated 2.8 million votes to George W. Bush in certain states because of drought or excessive rain. These are votes, the study dryly points out, that Gore could have used.
The climate over the course of the past year (like the massive drought experienced by much of the county) is already baked into Obama’s reelection chances. But even though Mother Nature can swing an election, incumbents still have some control over their fates. How a president manages a crisis matters, according to Reeves—and how a president sells his management of a crisis can matter even more.
“Every president puts up pictures of himself with shirtsleeves rolled up comforting voters,” Reeves says. “I’m willing to bet that we’re going to see the White House put up a picture of Obama doing the same.” In this case, Reeves is right: On Friday, the White House sent out a photograph of President Obama on a conference call with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials.
But political theater can minimize the human cost of natural disasters and make a bungled response look even worse.
“There’s that iconic photograph of President Bush flying over New Orleans looking down from his plane: That was a case where framing and the action didn’t go so well,” Reeves says. Presidents’ approval ratings can decrease when the mismanagement of a natural disaster turns into a national event. But absent a national crisis, there are number of swing states in the path of the storm, including Virginia and North Carolina. How those states are able to cope with Hurricane Sandy could make a difference in who carries them on November 6.
“Especially because it’s happening so close to the election, probably the visible response of the administration to the situation is going to matter more than the situation itself,” Bartels says. In other words, how Hurricane Sandy affects the 2012 election is, at least to some extent, in Barack Obama’s hands.
“Most of the time these kinds of things I think are a boon for presidents,” Reeves says. “Machiavelli talked about [how] every crisis is an opportunity.”
The Fifth Column 