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3 interviews. Mike Tidwell, author of "The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities." Professor J. Court Stevenson, University of Maryland, on city surge defenses around the world. Daphne Wysham w. German Green Parliamentarian Hermann Ott: leading the way to renewables before climate collapse.
Interviews with Mike Tidwell & Professor J. Court Stevenson by Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock
Interview of Hermann Ott by Daphne Wysham of the Institute for Policy Studies.
Clips of Dr. James Hansen of NASA courtesy "The Young Turks" Current TV November 2, 2012
Music clips: "Miami 2017" rewritten and sung live by Billy Joel for the NBC/Red Cross Hurricane Sandy relief concert November 2, 2012.
I'm Alex Smith. No matter who was elected in the United States, the fossil fuel companies won. This year, big oil, coal, and gas made more money than anyone in the history of money. The Supreme Court decision called "Citizens United" let big corporations spend hundreds of millions to fund politicians.
But there was another judgement made recently. In the Court of Nature: reality has spoken. Deny climate change all the way to the bank, but we will all pay billions, even pay with our lives, as Earth's climate is destabilized.
With Hurricane Sandy, the residents of New York and New Jersey got an ugly taste of the "different planet" James Hansen has warned us about for the past 25 years.
Can we protect New York City from the next big surge of rising seas? What about Washington and Baltimore? What happens to all that expensive real estate with ocean-front views?
We talk with University of Maryland scientist J. Court Stevenson about storm surge controls around the world. It will cost tens of billions, but as always, the cost of doing nothing is even more.
We can still prevent the worst by switching to renewable energy. Daphne Wysham brings us a key interview from Germany, where renewables are booming.
Hermann Ott is a Green Party Member of the German Federal Parliament. But even he knows renewables can't power our current over-amped civilization.
But we start with the man who wrote the book on New York, predicting the whole mess we've just seen in a book published six years ago. That's Mike Tidwell.
Tidwell wrote about hurricane damage to New Orleans in his 2003 book, two years before Katrina hit. His predictions about New York, all based on science, were published in 2006. What city is next? Why are the insurance companies pulling out of the coast?
