AIMEE ALLISON, aimee at rootsaction.org
Allison, co-executive director of Roots Action, said today, “Let big oil/coal pay for hurricane damage. Government welfare for oil, gas, coal, and nuclear should be eliminated. If cuts are to be made to reduce the national debt, they should begin with these kinds of subsidies, rather than in useful programs that serve people.

“Evidence is growing that fossil fuel industries exacerbate many so-called natural disasters. Until we can tax those industries to pay for their damage, the least we can do is end their dependence on welfare.”

CHRISTINE SHEARER, cshearer at cns.ucsb.edu
Shearer is author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story and a researcher for CoalSwarm (part of SourceWatch) and the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

She said today: “The intensity and path of Irene suggests that the old map of ‘natural’ hazards is being irreversibly transformed. Yet our national disaster management policies are not adapting to meet this new reality. No one knows this better than Kivalina, an Alaska Native community needing to be relocated since 1992 because of erosion and rising sea levels due to climate change. They are in danger, but there are no relocation policies in the U.S., and existing policies are insufficient to protect them. What does the steady erosion of Kivalina tell us about the ways in which the U.S. is unprepared for the growing effects of climate change? Kivalina author Christine Shearer can lay out the gaps in existing U.S. policies to help illuminate what we need to better protect ourselves, an issue made all the more urgent as conservative politicians move to whittle down what remains of disaster management and adaptation funding.”