After Superstorm Sandy, America is second-guessing the strength and capabilitiy of their infrastructure. Roads, airports, railways, and transit systems are getting hammered by extreme weather beyond what their builders imagined. The article, "U.S. Roads, Airports Unready for Extreme Weather," published on Nov. 21, 2012 and written by Joan Lowy, discussed the too politically sensitive to say aloud the source of their weather worries: climate change.
Sustainable Transportation, Energy Infrastructure and Climate Solutions Steering Committee executive director John Horsley commented, "There is a whole series of standards that are going to have to be revisited in light of the change in climate that is coming at us."
For example, Superstorm Sandy inflicted the worst damage to the New York subway system in its 108-year history. Flooding in Nebraska also threatened the Omaha airport, and caused sinkholes and soil boils in the area. Record-smashing heat from Colorado to Virginia last summer caused train tracks to bend and highway pavement to buckle.
With the weather pattern being so erratic, it can be difficult to predict the kind of winter or summers we'll be having. In order to decrease risk, improvements must be made on our nations infrastructure.
A congressional commission estimated that all levels of government together are spending $138 billion a year less than is needed to maintain the current system and to make modest improvements.
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With our sophisticated technology, I am certain that we will be able to construct sustainable, cost-effective (loosely said) infrastructure that can mitigate extreme weather. It will be difficult to fork up the money for that because so many people don't believe in our changing climate. I also think it's important to implement affordable, safe, green transportation options (such as hybrid cars). It's eco-friendly overall and can come hand in hand in with infrastructure.
As terrible and damaging as Hurricane Sandy was, I think it was important that such an event occurred, because it was a huge wake up call for our government and the people who live on the east coast (or coasts in general). As I have mentioned before in blogposts, I think the only way for us to better our technology and increase in efficiency, we need to go through such events. Learning from our mistakes can only improve our mitigation efforts.
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