Robinson: Harvey a vivid illustration of climate-change dangers

Hurricanes usually weaken when they approach a coastline, but Harvey was able to gain strength, making landfall as a Category 4 storm.

According to Penn State University professor Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading experts on climate change, Harvey’s unprecedented rainfall totals were likely boosted by global warming in at least two ways. Higher atmospheric and ocean temperatures mean more evaporation, he wrote in The Guardian, which means more precipitation. And the fact that the storm parked itself so stubbornly over Houston is due to a jet-stream pattern predicted in scientists’ climate-change models.

Humankind has boosted the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a shocking 40 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when we started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. Even if carbon emissions were magically ended tomorrow, warming would continue for many years. But we can — if we choose — keep climate change from getting catastrophically out of hand.

The rest of the industrialized world has decided to move toward a clean-energy future — and reap the economic benefits such a shift can entail. I’m betting that Trump’s successor, whether a Democrat or a Republican, will reverse his shortsighted, self-defeating decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

Nature is warning us

In addition to mitigating climate change, we must adapt to the warming we have made inevitable. Houston officials at least tried to learn one lesson: In 2005, as Hurricane Rita approached, officials ordered an evacuation that turned freeways into parking lots; about 100 people died in the chaos. This time, residents were advised to stay put — and, from what we know so far, there appears to have been much less loss of life.

But billions of dollars’ worth of private and public infrastructure is being destroyed. Since low-lying coastal cities are not likely to pick up and move, they are going to need natural or artificial barriers to protect against storm surge (which might have been the problem with Harvey, but wasn’t) and high-capacity drainage systems to alleviate flooding (which was).

Such projects are hugely expensive — but cheaper than repairing the damage from a citywide flood.

Also, the nation needs a sustainable way of providing flood insurance to those living in vulnerable areas. The current National Flood Insurance Program charges rates that do not nearly cover its outlays, and for years it relied on out-of-date maps that did not accurately show flood risks.

Buildings, meanwhile, can be made more flood-proof. President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring builders who receive federal funds for a project to account for the risk of flooding in their construction plans. Trump rescinded the measure, saying it was “job-killing.” How many people went to work in Houston today?

Folks, nature is telling us something. How many “100-year” storms or “1,000-year” floods will it take for us to listen?