It seems ironic the guts of President Biden's climate change legislation is being ripped out of the Build Back Better bill just as a freak Nor' Easter dumped multiple inches of rain in the NYC metro area causing billions of dollars of damage. Speaking to a grower in Goshen, NY, I was told the area received 7 inches of rain on Tuesday. This after nearly 5 inches fell in the same spot 6 weeks ago. To use a term the Divine Mrs. M abhors, this is unprecedented!
When the damages from these storms are toted up, they will probably not include the damage to drainage systems in the area, lost late season crops and potential losses from crops that may never get planted. The grower I mentioned in the first paragraph still has 12 acres of garlic to plant and the window to get it done is fast closing on him.
The climate change portion of Biden's and Congressional Democrats' legislation would have cost several hundred billion dollars over a 10 year period as a down payment in the fight against the rising amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The cost of not doing that will easily amount to trillions of dollars in mitigation and lost GDP over the same period. Not to mention the human suffering the disastrous weather changes will bring.
I haven't given up on legislating to fight climate change, but if the mid-term elections bring about a Republican majority in the House or the Senate, we can pretty much give up short term solutions to the most dangerous crisis in the history of the human race.
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