It honestly seems like the beginning of September really isn’t the best time for New York City. Twenty years ago, we had the attack on the Twin Towers that changed the world forever. This year, Hurricane Ida made sure that it would be another September for New Yorkers to never forget. The rain downpour was so bad, it looked like the entire city was underwater.
Sadly, at least 45 people have been reported dead after this insane storm. This was the very first time in New York City’s history that a flash flood emergency alert was issued, which is a pretty big deal. Residents were stuck in basements that were flooding rapidly, and in many places the electricity was out. It’s a historic amount of damage and a historic amount of human loss, that just further raises awareness for global warming and what it’s doing to our climate.
Over 20 million people were stuck in a flood warning zone. Fires broke out in multiple places. This all led to New York Governor Kathy Hochul advocating for a carbon-neutral policy, to avoid making the climate change worse than it already is. It may be too late for dozens of New Yorkers, but there’s still millions that could be saved with the right policy choices.
Whether you believe in global warming or not, whether you believe humans have the power to stop or influence it, it all matters very little when looking at these pictures. This is an unprecedented natural disaster, and we should do whatever we can to prevent this ever happening again. There were probably some climate change deniers with the people whose basements flooded. Some of them maybe even lost their lives. But no matter our political views, nobody wants this to happen to anyone ever again. If we can somehow influence this, we should do it for the better.
