Earth Protect Blog

Coast-to-coast crises waiting to happen, TNYT

By Christopher Flavelle

When extreme weather knocked out power and water in Texas last week, it represented a profound warning for the rest of the country: The nation’s vital infrastructure remains fundamentally unprepared for the shocks of climate change.The problem isn’t just underinvestment, experts said, but the assumption that it’s good enough to design and build infrastructure to meet the environmental conditions of the past. Climate change is upending that assumption.

What’s at stake: Everything that underpins modern life, including roads and railways, dams, drinking water and sewer systems, power plants, industrial waste sites and even our homes.

Quotable: “A lot of our infrastructure systems have a tipping point,” said Jennifer M. Jacobs, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire. “And the tipping point could be an inch.”

These charts show how power generation failed in Texas during the storm.

Did wind farms make the problems in Texas worse? In a word: No.