Harvey: Face of the future; wobbly flood insurance program; paying for Harvey aid, and more

still get overwhelmed because extreme weather is by its nature peculiar.”

Now comes the uncomfortable question: Who gets to rebuild after Harvey?(Kate Aronoff, The Intercept)
Hurricane Harvey is likely to focus attention on questions the federal government and the American public have in large part worked hard to avoid, because they don’t cut cleanly along ideological or partisan lines. And because they’re not much fun to think about. What does home ownership look like in an age of climate change? When is it OK to rebuild, and when is it time to retreat?

Harvey victims face toxic pollution as hurricane recovery begins(Alleen Brown, The Intercept)
Texas communities that have long experienced health problems from nearby oil refineries and chemical plants are now facing the fossil fuel industry’s longer-term impacts: storms made more severe by climate change and the painful recovery process that follows their landfall — a recovery made far worse by industrial contamination.

The strange future Hurricane Harvey portends(Peter Brannen, Atlantic)
Climate change is pushing more water into the atmosphere—with bizarre consequences.

With Harvey, imperfect engineering meets a perfect storm(Adam Rogers, Wired)
Addicks and Barker Reservoirs are swaths of placid Texas prairie, wetland, and forest straddling I-10 where it hits Highway 6, about 20 miles west of downtown Houston. But that’s not how nature sees them. To nature, those two open spaces are the top of a hydrological basin that drains through the city and into the Houston Ship Channel.

Harvey is a global warming issue — and a test for Donald Trump’s denialism(Matthew Rozsa, Salon)
Scientists knew that dangerous storms like Harvey were coming. Maybe it’s time to start listening, Mr. President

California’s goal: an electricity grid moving only clean energy(Chris Megerian. Los Angeles Times)
California lawmakers are considering a future without the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity, a step that would boost the renewable energy industry and expand the scope of the state’s battle against global warming.

U.S. government burying head deeper in sand on climate change(John Timmer, ArsTechnica)
An apparently widespread effort to ignore reality by the federal government.

How climate change fueled Hurricane Harvey(Eric Miller, Wired)
Climate change didn’t spawn Harvey, or any other hurricane, though it has made them more dangerous.

Why 85% of Houston homeowners have no flood insurance(Heather Timmons, Quartz)
As of August 2016, just 15% of the 1.6 million homes in Harris County, where Houston is located, had flood