...consider the implications from this event for our policies at the national, state and local levels. Our land use practices, infrastructure investments, and the resiliency or redundancy of the structures we rely upon for our modern society all need to be re-assessed. There are an incredible number of cascading consequences from food supplies to adequate drinking water supplies that we must respond to. One storm drove the most densely populated portion of the nation, and our country’s biggest city, back to the 19th Century in a matter of hours. What will happen next time? (And there will be a next time) Before we even begin to address the root causes of climate change and our answers for them, we need to have a day of reckoning where we acknowledge that something is happening and we need to react. That is how rational and intelligent people respond to challenges. One thing that should be clear however is that both time and our luck have run out. Its time to demand that political leaders respond to the reality that we are facing serious and growing threats that we can no longer afford to ignore or treat as just another political issue. The power to make this change lies with us. It’s high time we used that power.