Raining pain

The horror of the hurricane is hard to comprehend. Since reaching the coast on Wednesday, it has turned parts of cities into lakes. Winds of 150 mph tore the roof off a hospital. Broken power lines robbed 2.2 million homes of electricity. Governor Ron DeSantis called it "the biggest flood event" southwest Florida had ever known and called out 7,000 National GuardsmenA branch of the US army. to help.

The hurricane had already brought chaos to CubaAn island country between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. . The owner of a tobacco farm described it as "apocalypticReferring to the end of the world, or the collapse of civilisation.". Two people died, while 23 migrants were reported lost at sea. In the US, President Joe Biden said Hurricane Ian "could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida's history".

Today, the storm is expected to reach Georgia and South Carolina - and though it has weakened considerably, it is still at hurricane strength.

Florida is no stranger to hurricanes. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew caused an estimated £23bn of damage and left 250,000 people homeless. In 2017, Hurricane Irma caused £46bn of damage, affecting 65,000 homes and buildings.

But according to Bill McKibben, writing in The New Yorker, human follyFoolishness. Also used to describe a building built with no purpose. has made the suffering worse than it should have been. Hurricane Irma is "another stark demonstration of what happens when there's too much physical energy... and too little political energy".

Hurricanes, he explains, have been made more severe by global warming. The vast majority¹ of the heat trapped in the atmosphere has gone into the oceans rather than the atmosphere. Winds gather speed when they pass over warm water, and this is happening in a more pronounced way.

Scientists are particularly worried by the phenomenon of "rapid intensification": a dramatic increase in wind speed in a short space of time. Hurricane Ian accelerated by 35 mph in less than three hours.

There is also the challenge of rising sea levels: the water in Florida's Tampa Bay is a foot higher than it was 100 years ago. And because warm air can hold more vapour than cold air can, the rain that hurricanes bring has become even heavier.²

But some people continue to deny climate changeLong-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Human action is a major cause of climate change. and to ignore the consequences. Governor DeSantis declared last year that those who talk about climate change "typically use that as a pretext to do a bunch of left-wing things that they would want to do anyways. We are not doing any left-wing stuff".

So, despite the hurricane threat, people continue to build and buy homes on the Florida coast. Cape Coral, close to where Hurricane Ian made landfall, is the eighth-fastest growing metropolitan area in the US.

But climate change denial has consequences right across the world. Recent torrential rains were reported to have flooded a third of Pakistan. Though this was almost certainly an exaggeration,³ the suffering has been enormous.⁴

Also writing in The New Yorker, Mohammed Hanif calls for reparationsProviding payment to make amends for a wrongdoing. . He argues that since Pakistan causes less than 1% of the world's carbon emissions, it should be compensated by the rich people who mainly cause global warming. "They and their governments can and should pay for what they helped to destroy."

Yes: We already have the technology to tackle global warming. All that is needed is for businesses and governments to invest in it, which they will do if subjected to enough public pressure.

No: There are too many people like Ron DeSantis in positions of power. As long as they continue to deny climate change there is no chance of creating the political will to deal with it.  

Or... We should not even attempt to. The Earth always finds a way of regulating itself, and since we caused the problem we have no right to interfere, even if it comes at the cost of our civilisation.