Frankly, it’s all out war.
Unless something massive shifts, like federal spending priorities, the costs of Harvey and Irma will likely drown FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been sounding the death knell for the program since 2012. And recently they added the agency to their “high risk list.” That means entirely unsustainable. A category that the GAO had previously reserved for federal programs paying the debt owed to Native Americans and - wait for it - “federal environmental liabilities.”
Yeah, for a country that boasts of liberty and justice for all, it’s really in over its head when it comes to the people who dedicate themselves to preserving the land for seven generations or the territory upon which the nation’’s built.
Unfortunately, the new president’s swimming in the wrong direction: tossing overboard all the regulation required to fein even the most basic effort to preserve the planet. His renewed attacks on the atmosphere which surrounds the earth and maintains the fragile life sustaining 200 degree fluctuation which allows for animal life, have finally raised earth’s ire.
Frankly, it’s all out war.
And the earth ain’t taking this affront lightly. Just 134 days after the president bombed the waterways with toxic waste, Hera crashed Harvey into Houston. The president said he was going to end the war on clean coal - promising the planet more carbon in her atmosphere - just 151 days before Hera hammered oil refineries shuttering 16 percent of them. Take that carbon production!
But what about Harvey and Irma? The earth didn’t invent naming her bombing raids. The U.S. government, for example, famously named her catastrophic atomic attacks, Fat Man and LIttle Boy - two good nicknames for the president, come to think of it. And while the earth doesn’t speak English, she did have some help. Harvey and Irma were named by the Earth’s allies. She has many: the aforementioned Native Americans and the president’s favorite group to ignore, climate scientists.
You know, the climate scientists who were so universally horrified when 95 days before Irma inundated islands under US stewardship the president withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. The same climate scientists he relies on now to track the paths of Hera’s hurricanes.
So if the smart people are on the planet’s side, who is on the president’s side?
Well, he’s got the US military. And he’s been putting them to work cleaning up after the earth bombards his nation with water and air. Ironically, he denies the power of water and air when it comes to generating electricity, but he’s got to admit they’re pretty formidable weapons. And, now, just 105 days after Hera tried to subtly get the president’s attention by opening a sinkhole in front of his Mar-a-lago estate, she’s bearing down on it with Hurricane Irma.
If the earth has been wondering just how stupid and stubborn this man can be - how long it will take to get through to the Fat Man/LIttle Boy - she can take a page from US history. Like the US in WW II, Hera doesn’t have to care how much destructive power this war takes. Ultimately she’s more powerful. If her stubborn enemy persists, she’ll only grow more ruthless and eventually turn to more lethal weapons. And in the end, she’ll win.