SANDY’S
DEVASTATION
even as public and private sector
leaders in both New York and New
Jersey began expressing growing
concern over the potential for climate change to intensify storms
and accelerate already rising sea
levels. New York City officials in
particular were well aware of the
ways in which climate change
would make the potentially destructive effects of a major hurricane worse, scientists said.
The city is “one of the leaders of the country and the world,”
on climate change, said Cynthia
Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies. She has worked
with both the international Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change and the local New York
City Panel on Climate Change, a
body the mayor convened in 2008
specifically to look at how to
adapt the city and its infrastructure to rising sea levels.
Despite the known risks and
a push for quick action by some
experts, however, only limited
protective steps were taken, even
as development in at-risk coastal
areas boomed.
“It’s just horrendous that
there’s been all this research and
all this analysis and so little ac-
HUFFINGTON
12.02.12
tion,” said Suzanne Mattei, former chief of the New York State
Department of Environmental
Conservation’s New York City
regional office. “It’s a shame that
we seem never to take the kind of
action we need to until something
really awful happens.”
In New York City, the mayor’s
office and the city council had entertained plans since 2009 for a
massive harbor barrier, like those
“IF YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFUL VIEW, SOONER
OR LATER MOTHER
NATURE IS GOING TO
GIVE YOU THE BILL.”
built in London and in The Netherlands, to deflect storm surges.
But studies on such a massive and
costly undertaking were only in
their first stages. Higher concrete
sea walls, meant to address the
new dangers introduced by climate change, were also discussed
but not pursued.
More immediate steps, like using more submersible cables in
Consolidated Edison’s electrical
network in New York, or protecting
the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority’s urban subways against
flooding, received only a fraction of