After a summer of disasters, addressing climate change becomes more urgent

This has been a summer of disasters of historic proportions in the U.S.

Western states have been engulfed in vast wildfires, made worse by record-breaking heat waves. U.S. weather officials report that July was the hottest month ever recorded in 142 years of record keeping.

Northeastern and the Gulf states have been battered by extreme storms.

Hurricane Ida was the fifth-most powerful storm to strike the U.S. when it hit Louisiana with maximum winds of 150 mph. The storm dropped devastating rainfall across Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.

The storm has killed at least 13 people in the Gulf Coast region and at least 46 in the Northeastern region. It has caused tens of billions of dollars in flood, wind and other damage, including the electrical grid.

Scientists say climate change increases the frequency of extreme weather such as large tropical storms and the droughts and heatwaves that create conditions for wildfires.

Climate change is a reality in the United States and across the world. The question is no longer if climate change exists, but what are we going to do about it?

First, we need to be better prepared for more extreme weather.

President Joe Biden said he will further press Congress to pass his nearly $1 trillion infrastructure bill to improve roads, bridges, the electric grid and sewer system. Improving the infrastructure is needed to ensure that the country can withstand the damages caused by increasingly dangerous weather.

“These extreme storms, and the climate crisis, are here,” Biden said in a White House speech. “We must be better prepared. We need to act.”

The president is right. Voters should urge their members of congress to pass legislation on infrastructure.

Improving the infrastructure is urgently needed to ensure that the country can withstand the damage caused by increasingly dangerous weather.

Better infrastructure makes a difference.

The flooding in Louisiana was less than the region experienced 16 years ago during Hurricane Katrina because of federal investments in the area’s levee system.

In addition to being better prepared, we must also do more to slow or stop the catastrophic consequences of global warming. Climate specialists say climate change is primarily caused by natural or man-made forces.

The federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website NOAA Climate.gov, provides several mitigation strategies that we can use to slow or stop human caused global warming including:

●        Where possible, we can switch to renewable sources of energy (such as solar and wind energy) to power our homes and buildings, thus emitting far less heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

●        Where feasible, we can drive electric vehicles instead of those that burn fossil fuels; or we can use mass transit instead of driving our own cars.

●        Where affordable, we can conserve energy by better insulating our homes and buildings, and by replacing old, failing appliances with more energy-efficient models.

●        Where practicable, we can counterbalance our annual carbon dioxide emissions by investing in commercial services that draw down an equal amount of carbon out of the atmosphere, such as through planting trees or carbon capture and storage techniques.

●        Where practical, we can support more local businesses that use and promote sustainable, climate-smart practices such as those listed above.

●        We can consider placing an upper limit on the amount of carbon dioxide we will allow ourselves to emit into the atmosphere within a given timeframe.

Whether it's being better prepared for disasters by investing in infrastructure or mitigating global warming by using more renewable energy, the summer of 2021 shows that we have to do more to address climate change.

Irv Randolph is an award-winning journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @IrvRandolph and at therandolphreport@

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