Houston (and America), We Have a Problem

Larger Houston Landsat From http://landsat.usgs.gov/gallery/detail/370/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The city of Houston and much of southeast Texas have just been through a watery hell, thanks to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey.  The toll so far:  51 inches of rain (that's over four feet), 28 dead (according to CNN), tens of thousands displaced and possibly billions of dollars in damages from the storm.

Meanwhile President Donald Trump, having just come off another ego-stroking rah-rah event in Phoenix, tried to upstage the hurricane's landfall (as only he can) by making the following announcements:

• Pardoning Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona.  He was about to face jail time for alleged racial profiling and other human rights violations in how he treated his prisoners. before Trump  came to the rescue.

• Reinforcing his ban on transgenders from serving in the military, though that has since been frozen by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis so they could study the ban before implementing it.

After days of tweets giving 'attaboys' to FEMA officials in Houston and plugging somebody's book, the President finally made it to Texas (but not Houston) to meet with local officials on how to deal with the situation.  Otherwise he treated this like a campaign stop (he did win the state in the election, you know), though he couldn't be bothered to mention those who have died or are still suffering because of Harvey.  Trump did rectify that omission the next day--in Springfield, Missouri, where he'd rather talk about reforming taxes.

Houston is the fourth-largest city in America.  It is also an environmental and man-made disaster waiting to happen, having paved over a swamp and put up a parking lot (to paraphrase Joni Mitchell), allowing no place for the water to go.  As a result, Houston from the air resembles either the Lost City of Atlantis or an American Venice every time a hurricane or a major rainstorm hits.

Because oil refineries and offshore rigs have been closed and/or damaged due to Harvey, expect to see prices spike at the pump.  It will not only cost you more to drive, but you will also be paying more for everything else.  So there goes Trump's robust economy.

It's too early to compare Harvey with Katrina, the other infamous storm that hit a major U.S. city.  As this storm moves north (it has already hit Beaumont and Lake Charles hard), the floodwaters will eventually recede and many unpleasant reminders of what the water left behind await.  Is this going to be the future of violent storms and cities underwater many scientists have warned about?  And what do we do about a president who just sentenced us to that kind of future?