Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, the same day on which hurricane Katrina that caused over 1,800 deaths and more than 120 billion U.S. dollars in damage blasted ashore 16 years ago (in 2005).
This time, cost aside, the damage was staggering.
Having taken a beating, Louisiana is currently grappling with widespread power outages, one of the worst in recent decades.
Thanks to geographical propinquity, the Gulf Coast and other contiguous U.S. states are are close to the Atlantic Ocean. As a result, U.S. states such as New York, Florida, New Jersey, always suffer the full brunt of hurricanes in summer as, when a hurricane slams ashore, states extremely close to the Ocean would likely be the hardest hit.
Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York were in shambles as hurricane Ida's remnants wreaked deadly havoc.
Also unable to escape Ida's wrath was New Orleans, which has been plagued by power outages.
This marks a dismal week for Louisiana, New Orleans and some other contiguous states that were the hardest hit, as the storm slammed ashore with 150 mph winds.
To add insult to injury, all eight of the transmission lines that link a region in which over 900,000 people reside couldn't withstand strong winds and failed.
The good news is, 3 of the lines have been restored.
This may have given you a bizarre feeling of deja vu, since this storm is considered a carbon copy of hurricane Harvey that devastated Texas back in August 2017.
With Americans residing in storm-prone areas inured to devastating storms in summer, and as Americans start to pick up the pieces, here's a question: Is the aftermath of the storm a monument to climate change?
Chances are, it is, according to Tripti Bhattacharya, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences are Syracuse University in New York.
Flabbergasted by the extent to which the remnants and wrath of Ida devastated the region, Bhattacharya said this kind of storm would have been extraordinarily rare decades ago. And hurricane Ida is now considered the quintessence of climate change.
Now, there is no denying that human activities are the culprits of the worsening of climate change, according to a damning report from the United Nations.
But having said that, scientists say we are not fighting a losing battle, as, according to them, we will still be able to meet the targets set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to well under 2 degrees Celsius.
Having witnessed the devastation by hurricane Ida in the Gulf Coast, we are unable to put a good face on climate change's devastating impact on earth. Also, we cannot simply ensconce ourselves in a chair in a warm house and close our eyes to the fact that climate change is indeed worsening.
While experts take an eclectic approach to stopping the worsening climate change in its tracks, if we refuse to think of the worst-case scenario and continue to deem climate change a hoax, our attitude towards dealing with climate change will assuredly aggravate the problem of climate change, and our future will certainly be marred and riddled with gloom and doom.
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