24 years ago today the Northridge #earthquake (actually 2 near simultaneous 6.9 quakes) caused death & severe damage across Southern California. I lived in Burbank at the time and clearly recall feeling powerless against the forces of nature. #northridge
There's little warning for a quake (just enough to duck under a desk if you have a warning system like they do in Japan) and the damage is done almost all at once. So we establish tougher building codes, do drills, and train first responders.
Earthquakes like the Northridge quake are the result of pressure building up in fault lines that run all through Southern California and pretty much every where else in the world. (Even here in Florida, there's a huge fault just off the coast.)
If #ClimateChange happened all at once, like an earthquake releasing pent up stress, then perhaps we would be shook up enough to take action. The good news is that we can see Climate Change coming and it is entirely preventable.
But we haven't established tougher regulatory protections, we don't drill for a response to weather extremes or coastal flooding, and we don't have a corps of dedicated first responders either.
The Defense Department, which is concerned about the global political disruption being caused by Climate Change, has a few small programs to help conserve natural resources, but they need to do more.
How great would it be if we spent a significant portion of our defense budget doing things to prevent climate change both North America and around the world as well.
The change wouldn't happen all at once, but a lessening of severe weather, retraction of global conflict over scarce natural resources, and stabilization of energy consumption via renewable resources would be a good measurable result.
The end result would be many fewer deaths of our own US Servicemen and women in a series of endless wars and fewer deaths in general around the world. We don't have to get people around a table to agree on it. We just have to start doing it.
Put the power and combined knowledge of the United States of America behind a project that will have a long and lasting positive impact on the whole world.
Make a difference that will leave future generations something to look back upon and be proud of. The next greatest generation could be alive today. Are you a part of it?
