As Another Major Storm Looms, Will Candidates Keep Ignoring Climate?

How’s this for irony: For the first time in more than a decade, this year’s presidential candidates failed to have a substantive discussion of climate change — save for one candidate (guess which one!) mocking the whole concept.

Now Hurricane Sandy is looming over the eastern seaboard, so menacing the stock market is closed and the subways aren’t running in New York City. Reports say that parts of Manhattan are already flooding, before the storm has made landfall.

In the final days of this protracted presidential campaign — waged over issues like taxes and health care — the practical imperative to address climate change is impossible to ignore, says James Rowen at the Political Environment:

I’m not saying that human behavior and fossil fuel burn caused this storm, but it’s the height of denial to say that our climate isn’t reflecting the new, post-industrial ‘normal’ long-predicted: heavier rain events, extreme weather outbreaks and growing danger to low-lying, coastal areas that will take lives and greatly add to public budgets and emergency spending.