A Global Warming Wake-Up Call

Was Katrina caused by global warming? The answer is: Probably not. But was climate change enough to turbo charge the storm to a category five? That's entirely likely. Some would argue, a certainty.

Here's the thing: Global warming doesn't make the weather we experience. It makes the weather we experience stronger. It turns droughts, heat waves, blizzards and, yes, hurricanes up to eleven. And sometimes 12, and 13. Whether Katrina, like Ivan before her, was the specific product of global warming is not a fruitful debate. It's unknowable. But what can be said with real certainty, is that unless we work to reverse course on our carbon emissions, we will see more storms like the one that ravaged the Gulf Coast this week.

President Bush said at the end of June that the Kyoto accord would have "wrecked" the American economy. But we're now staring at tens of billions of insured losses from a single storm. Billions more that are going to have to come from the federal government to repair highways, oil infrastructure, and assorted destruction.

We're going to pay to fight global warming one way or another. Hopefully this hurricane -- and the wrecked economy of the Gulf Coast -- helps us wake up to that fact.