Thigh-High Politics is an op-ed column by Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca that breaks down the news, provides resources for the resistance, and just generally refuses to accept toxic nonsense.

The devastation of Harvey continues in Houston. The number of deaths is likely to grow once the work of clearing the streets can begin, though there is no doubt about this: A superstorm has destroyed the fourth-largest city in America, in part because it was designed with a blind eye toward the extreme weather that would descend upon it.

Terrible images and reports have emerged from the storm: residents of a nursing home waist-deep in severe flooding and bodies seen floating in the water. It can be difficult to sort through the politicized debate around global warming, but it’s all too easy to understand the pain of loss that is the current reality for those in the region and sprawled across the news for the rest of the country. We must rally behind Texas as a nation, giving all that we can to rebuild, while also reconciling with the reality that Harvey is not a freak incident to be written off as bad luck. What’s happening in Houston is the human expression of a future in which we continue failing to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Or, as meteorologist Eric Holthaus wrote for Politico, “Harvey is what climate change looks like. More specifically, Harvey is what climate change looks like in a world that has decided, over and over, that it doesn’t want to take climate change seriously.”

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Science, by its very nature, deals in uncertainty, but there is no doubt that we will see more extreme weather as a result of climate change, man-made or otherwise. Naomi Oreskes, PhD, a professor of the History of Science and affiliated professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, put the concept into clear terms during a phone call with me: “It’s basic physics,” she explained. “If you put more energy into the climate system, that energy has to go somewhere, and one of the places energy goes in the climate system is into storms.” In short, there is scientific certainty that our future will increasingly include the kind of extreme weather we are seeing in Houston, or the fact that city planning left it especially vulnerable to Harvey’s wreckage. Our collective survival depends on improving this preparedness. This is a place of undeniable agreement in an otherwise scrambled public conversation.

Even Judith Curry, PhD, a controversial climatologist who alleges that there’s uncertainty about the significance of the human role in climate change, emphasized the part of inadequate infrastructure and irresponsible land as factors in the devastation in Houston. “They’ve been building on floodplains,” she said. “The whole city is sinking because of the massive development, and there’s nowhere for the water to go.” There is a Guardian article on this, if you’re interested in Houston’s particular vulnerabilities, but it basically comes down to a coastal region covered in pavement, and a philosophy of city planning that is the equivalent of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. “The rebuilding of Houston is an opportunity to design a 21st century structure that is more resilient to these extreme weather events,” Curry added.

Oreskes also emphasized the need for smarter infrastructure, but stressed the real reason the infrastructure is failing. “A crucial part of this is that our infrastructure isn’t prepared to deal with it,” she said. “We build roads, bridges, and houses with a set of expectations about what conditions those things have to withstand, and when the world starts changing on us, that’s when we get into trouble.”

It is crucial we keep this in mind when rebuilding Houston and maintaining all American cities. “This has to be the wake-up call that shows we have to be ready,” added Gail Carlson, PhD, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Colby College. “The important questions are, how bad is it now, and how bad is it going to get? We have to change the way we build our cities to prepare for that.”

This plea is more than 20/20 hindsight in observing the horrors of Harvey. Just two weeks ago, President Trump signed an executive order rescinding flood protections for federal infrastructure — essentially providing a free pass for development unfettered by rising seas and unprecedented precipitation. That’s terrible news for environmentalists, and also anyone who would rather not see entire communities drowned out overnight.

There can be no more shortcuts to savings and profit as we invest in the skeletons that support our civilization. As we mourn for Houston, we must go beyond thoughts, prayers, and donations — which is not to say all of these are not necessary. But we must also insist on having a mind for future prevention. The nonsense political debate will continue to rage with regard to how much man is to blame in the undeniable trend toward climate change, but science guarantees us that the sort of extreme weather unfolding in Houston is our new normal, regardless of its root cause. Working toward adaptation through preparation is not a choice, but an inevitability. Our current approach is like sitting next to a sandcastle, pretending we had no idea it was going to get swept away — only the sandcastle is civilization, and we know damn well that the waves are coming in.

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