By Daniel J. Weiss, Erica Goad | August 17, 2009
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Hurricane Bill is gathering strength in the Atlantic, and is “poised to grow into a major storm” later this week. It could hit the East Coast as a Category 3 storm with 121 mile-per-hour winds. Meanwhile, “hot, dry winds and high temperatures continued to fan wildfires across California yesterday.” Recent wildfires in California have burned over 100,000 acres.
These events have a common thread. The ferocity of tropical storms and spread of wildfires will increase as the planet warms. There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that global warming has already harmed the United States. And the soaring number of presidential disaster declarations reflects the growing economic, social, and environmental harms from global warming.
Since 1969, presidential disaster declarations for floods, storms, and wildfires rose by 43 percent. An increase in human fatalities, property damage, and disrupted business has accompanied these disasters, as reflected in the spiking cost of insured losses from catastrophes, which totaled around $3 billion in 1980 and has since risen to more than $70 billion (in 2005 dollars) in 2005. The most recent report by scientists with the International Panel on Climate Change shows that the predicted increase in natural disasters is indeed already unfolding.
The average number of presidential disaster declarations per month in office steadily rose, beginning with President Ronald Reagan . His relatively low rate of declarations may have reflected his antigovernment philosophy—he may have been more hesitant to use this authority since he generally opposed government involvement for many purposes. After Reagan, the rate of declarations increased steadily from President George H.W. Bush through President George W. Bush. And President Barack Obama has a higher rate still, even though this data is from his first five months in office in 2009, including eight declared disasters in June alone. These trends should serve as another catalyst for action by the Senate this fall as it debates the American Clean Energy and Security Act.
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