For three years while we lived in New York City, it was cheap entertainment to ride the subway down to the Staten Island Ferry with friends, and back up to our stop on Broadway. You saw all kinds of people. Sometimes you even encountered a musician, a comedian, or someone recognizably famous.
It was with some dismay that I watched a video this past week as the streets of the Big Apple flooded and all that water went underground into the subway system. There was a film of water gushing over the subway platforms as the tracks became rivers. Officials said the sewer system would accommodate an inch and a half of rain an hour, but the city got over two inches in an hour. Amazingly, the system was fully operational the next morning for commuter traffic, as they pumped 16 million gallons of water from the system overnight.
Shortly before the big rain in New York City, there were four 1 in 1,000 year floods in this country in Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois. Most people are aware of the July 4, Texas storm that claimed 133 lives, 27 of them children and a counselor from Camp Mystic. Only now, two weeks later, can it be confirmed that only three people are still missing. Over a thousand people, including a team from Mexico, scoured the area for bodies after this deadliest inland flooding event in U.S. history.
Less known, in New Mexico, flooding took the lives of three people. Two were children, 4 and 7 years of age. They were camping with their parents. Their father is a soldier on leave from Fort Bliss. He and his wife are hospitalized with severe injuries. The other death was an older man, swept downstream by the floodwaters. This area was the same one hit by wildfires last year.
There have been nine flash flood emergencies issued recently in the U.S. The average these days is three per month. A record 92 flash flood emergencies were issued in 2024, nearly three times the annual average since the alert was first implemented in 2003. And its not just the United States. We are seeing severe weather happening all over the globe. China has been hit with overwhelming rains for weeks this spring. And around the world, drought refugees compete with flood refugees, fires with floods.
The good news is that when people are aware and willing, there are alternatives to our polluting the ecosystem. The population of New York City has mostly abandoned automobiles for more ecologically friendly options. Its a pedestrian and bicycle-friendly city.
Perhaps you will go on the Five Boro Bike Tour that takes riders 40 miles through all four boroughs of the city. Its not unusual to have 30,000 cyclists for this annual affair.
The ride starts for many at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with the blessing of the bikes, a 27-year tradition. Free helmets are available for those without one.
Or perhaps you would rather take a ride through Central Park. You could travel the whole park in an hour on the bike paths. Or you can rent a bike with CitiBike, to take you to any New York City borough or into New Jersey. Rent one for a ride, a day, or with a membership; and they can be returned to any station. There are 25,000 bikes available at 1,500 stations.
The most difficult problem we need to overcome is people in power who refuse to come to terms with a climate emergency. Riding bikes wont solve the problem when a president on Day 1 removes us from the Paris Climate Agreement and declares an energy emergency, to facilitate permitting of more fossil fuel production and exploration. Riding bikes wont save the environment from human greed, motivating the rich to get richer at the expense of the natural world.
But every bike rider who leaves that carbon-producing vehicle in the garage helps. Every person who takes public transportation helps. Every person who plants a tree helps. Every person who challenges the powerful money-hungry polluter helps.
Every person who works for environmentally aware persons in positions of power helps.
Floods and fires are trying to tell us something. We need to listen, and act.
Leave a Reply