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The United States, at least the eastern seaboard of the country, is under attack. Not from Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela or any of the usual suspects. The offender who dares to assault the world's only superpower is a hurricane, innocuously named Sandy.
Sandy though is an overgrown progenitor of Mother Nature, who no one messes with; not even a superpower. As if to remind US Presidential candidates that it is not a good idea to put global warming -- or human aggravated climate change -- on the backburner (as both President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney have done in this election campaign), Mother Nature appears to have let loose Sandy to deliver a kick in the American gut. The country is bracing itself for it on Monday and Tuesday.
Although it is only a category one hurricane just now, Sandy is being described as the largest storm ever to head to the US. A freak occurence that involves Sandy meeting two winter fronts coming in from the north is expected to bring about a massive churn, the kind never seen before. It has therefore has been dubbed a Frankenstorm. Its footprint is almost half the size of India's landmass, and its cover area when it hits the landmass is so vast, stretching from the Carolinas all the way up the Atlantic seaboard to Connecticut and Massachusetts, and deep into Ohio in the west, that no one is even worrying about where the epicenter will cross over. It's a minor detail.
As of Sunday midnight, the storm is still offshore but the scale of preparations is comparable to one for an alien invasion or a nuclear attack. New York City and Washington DC, the country's and the world's financial and power center, have shut down. Transit system (subways, metros, buses) will not ply, schools and colleges are closed, and even the government and local bodies will work with only emergency crews, thousands of whom have been readied for repairing widespread power outages that are expected to occur in the next 48 hours.
Right now there is an eerie quiet punctuated by the steady patter of rain in Washington DC, where your correspondent is getting this story out before the expected power breakdown. Huge amounts of rain accompanied by heavy winds gusting up to 60-70 kmph have been forecast bringing down trees on power lines. People have been advised to stock up on water, food, candles and other essentials.
Poll pundits are wondering what effect a seriously disruptive storm could have on the elections for which voting is next Tuesday (November 6). But the more serious long-term concern is how quickly the issue of climate change has fallen off the political radar. "According to a survey in this week's Time magazine, 85% of Americans think global warming is happening. The other 15% work for the White House," the comedian Jay Leno once joked, illustrating the casual approach of the political class - particularly Republicans, to the issue, once they reach the corridors of power. Democrats appear to have joined the hands-off bandwagon.
No one, including the gagsters, may be laughing very much later this week after sandy storm across Eastern United States.
